Stealing Mona Lisa

by Carson Morton

  * * *

  It began, as these things often do, with a woman. Her name was Chloe, and she was the wife of Jean Laroche, an art dealer on rue Saint-Honoré. On the surface, Laroche was an honest dealer in fine art, but his real money came from selling fake masters, and in that side of his business he worked closely with Valfierno. Chloe was the kind of woman whose presence alone constantly reminded men of their sexuality and, to make matters worse, she was extremely flirtatious. Valfierno enjoyed her playful advances but never took them seriously. After all, she flirted with everyone. Everyone, that is, except her husband. And her husband was a jealous man.

  At first, when the four young ruffians had cornered him in the alleyway off rue Saint-Martin, he thought it was a simple robbery. Thugs—dubbed apaches by the newspapers for their vicious brand of lawless violence—often roamed the streets at night. Valfierno was not worried initially. He had enough francs in his pocket—or so he thought—to appease them. But when the largest youth, apparently the leader of the pack, informed him they had a message from Monsieur Laroche, he knew he was in trouble. As they proceeded to beat him to the ground, he had allowed himself an ironic thought: If I’m to be killed by these ruffians, it’s a pity I’m not guilty of the crime they’re punishing me for.

  And killed he knew he would have been, if it hadn’t been for Émile.

  As Valfierno lay on the rough cobblestones trying to protect himself from the flying boots and clubs, he had all but given up any hope of survival when the punishment suddenly stopped. He heard the apaches murmuring to each other and risked opening his eyes. Their attention was riveted on the slight figure of a young boy standing on the other side of Valfierno’s prostrate figure.

  “And what do you think you’re doing?” the leader demanded, appraising the boy. “Allez, gamin! Off with you before you get a boot up your ass!”

  But the boy didn’t move. He just stood there observing the scene with an expression of almost innocent curiosity. One of the young apaches stepped over Valfierno and raised his club as if to hit the boy. The boy flinched instinctively but held his ground.

  The apache with the club turned to the leader and shrugged.

  “Go on,” said the leader. “Clobber the little bastard if he won’t move.”

  The apache turned back to the boy, brandishing his club once again. The boy just looked at him.

  “Ah, to hell with it.” The apache lowered his weapon and returned to the group. “There’s no fun in this. It’s too easy. You clobber him if you want to.”

  “Merde,” the leader said. “We’ve done enough for one night, anyway. We’ve given this dandy a lesson he’ll not soon forget.” The others agreed and, with a few parting kicks for good measure, the apaches melted away into the shadows.

  Valfierno looked up at the boy through swollen eyelids. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  The boy hesitated for a moment. “Émile.”

  “Well, thank you, Émile. I was beginning to get the distinct impression that they didn’t like me. Are you hungry, Émile?”

  It was weeks later, after the boy had been cleaned up and moved into the attic bedroom of the house Valfierno rented on rue Edouard VII, that Valfierno casually asked him why he hadn’t run away that night.

  Émile gave Valfierno a puzzled look. Hadn’t it been obvious?

  “You were lying in my spot.”

  * * *

  Valfierno looked back out over the sea.

  “Yes, Paris is a hard city for many, but a city full of opportunity for those with the right talents.”

  Émile made no response, simply nodded his head in a desultory manner. In fact, he had said very little since they left Buenos Aires. Valfierno knew all too well of Émile’s aversion to water, but he also imagined that he was apprehensive about returning home. He had tried to draw him out on a number of occasions, but each time he had been unsuccessful. Something else was bothering the young man.

  “Let’s take a walk,” Valfierno suggested.

  As they began to stroll around the promenade deck, Valfierno thought he would try a different tack.

  “I’m sorry that we couldn’t include Julia in our plans,” he said casually.

  “Why be sorry?” Émile said. “She was more trouble than she was worth.”

  “She had her talents. Without her, I’m afraid we would have lost Mr. Joshua Hart and all our work would have come to nothing.”

  “We would have thought of something. We managed without her for years before and we will again.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Valfierno without much conviction.

  “Nothing was safe around her,” Émile continued, warming to the subject. “She was little more than a common thief.”

  “And what are we, Émile?” Valfierno asked. “Uncommon thieves?”

  “It’s entirely different. For one thing, she could never keep her hands off anyone’s watch, especially mine.”

  “Yet you still have it,” said Valfierno.

  “No thanks to her,” Émile said, turning a corner beneath the captain’s bridge. “If I never see her again, it will be too soon.”

  Émile glanced at Valfierno as he said this and didn’t see the woman coming from the opposite direction in time to avoid an awkward collision. “I beg your pardon, madame…”

  “Perhaps, monsieur, you should pay more attention to where you are going,” said Julia Conway.

  “How did you…?” Émile sputtered in shock. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same as you, of course, going to France.” She casually handed him back his pocket watch. “Here. I’ve got to keep in practice.”

  Completely flustered, Émile took it from her.

  Valfierno appraised her. “So,” he said evenly, “from pickpocket to stowaway.”

  “Who are you calling a stowaway? I stole my ticket fair and square.”

  “Little good it will do you when we dock,” said Émile. “They’ll never let you into France without a passport.”

  “Why don’t you let me worry about that,” she said as she sauntered away from them along the deck. “I can take care of myself, remember?”

  Émile stared at her receding figure. Valfierno put a hand on the young man’s shoulder.

  “I thought she wouldn’t give up so easily,” Valfierno said with admiration before starting off again.

  Émile stood for a moment longer before turning on his heel and following him.

  * * *

  Valfierno and Émile passed through the line at the Le Havre customshouse with no difficulty. The necessity of a quick departure from Buenos Aires had always been a possibility so Valfierno made sure that Émile always had a current French passport. After retrieving his stamped passport from one of the customs officials, Valfierno pulled Émile aside. Julia was standing in line a little way behind them, and he wanted to see how exactly she planned to pass inspection.

  When Julia’s turn came, a middle-aged customs official opened her passport and perused it. Looking up from his desk, he gave her an appraising stare. She returned his gaze with the prettiest, most innocent smile she could muster.

  “Is anything wrong, monsieur?” she asked demurely.

  “If you don’t mind me saying, mademoiselle,” the man replied, “you look much younger than your birth date would indicate.”

  “I don’t mind in the least,” she said with a coy sideways glance. “In fact, under different circumstances, I’d want to hear much more of what you have to say.”

  Taking notice of the looks he was beginning to get from some of the other officials, the man stamped the passport, held it up to her, and mumbled, “Welcome to France, mademoiselle…”

  Julia smiled sweetly and took the passport. As she paraded past Valfierno and Émile, she turned to them with a smile on her face.

  “What are you waiting for?” she said before moving off into the crowd.

  “Bienvenu á France,” Valfierno said to no one in particular before he and Émile picked up t
heir bags and followed her.

  Part II

  To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean.

  —Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

  Chapter 11

  The locomotive clattered across the verdant French countryside, its billowing plume of smoke and steam staining an otherwise cloudless sky. Inside a private compartment, Valfierno sat with his face buried in a day-old copy of Le Matin. He had hardly spoken a word since the train had pulled out of the station at Le Havre.

  Émile sat next to him by the window, across from Julia, his gaze fixed on the passing landscape, less from interest than from a desire to avoid making eye contact with her. He could not stop thinking about how easily she had insinuated herself into their small party. And she was oblivious to the fact that she was intruding. In fact, she seemed as enthusiastic as a schoolgirl on a Sunday outing.

  “It’s exciting, isn’t it,” Julia said, catching Émile glance at her.

  “What is?” Émile said, looking back out the window and trying to sound casual.

  “Everything. The boat ride, the train, Paris.”

  Émile gave a noncommittal grunt. “We’re not even there yet.”

  “I mean the anticipation. It’s exciting.”

  “What do you know about Paris?” he challenged.

  “Only what I’ve read in books. I know it’s the City of Light, the city of romance, or so they say.”

  Émile rolled his eyes. “Then I can imagine the types of books you’ve been reading.”

  “Can you?” she asked, a slight challenge in her voice. “There was one book that was very good indeed. What was it again? I think the writer was Hugo something or other. No. Something Hugo. Victor Hugo. That’s it. It was a very big book. It had romance, war, escaped prisoners, orphans, sacrifice. It really was very good. What was it called? A funny name. Something about everyone being miserable all the time. Have you read that one?”

  Émile turned to her. “Les Misérables,” he said in a way suggesting that only idiots would not know that name. “And you haven’t read it.”

  “I have too. I just couldn’t remember the name. Ask me any question about it. Go on. Ask me.”

  “Forget it.” Émile turned his head back to the window.

  “You haven’t read it, have you?” she chirped with triumph. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

  Flushed with victory, she looked over at Valfierno, catching a brief, amused look from him as he peered above his newspaper. Looking out the window, she allowed herself to become mesmerized by the lines of trees receding toward the hills, all moving at different speeds according to their distance from the train. As she allowed the gentle rocking of the carriage to lull her into a half sleep, she remembered fondly the time that Uncle Nathan had told her the entire story of Les Misérables. Perhaps one day she would actually read it.

  * * *

  Valfierno, Émile, and Julia stepped onto a crowded platform lit by rays of sunlight filtering through the vast arched skylights in the coffered ceiling of the Gare d’Orsay. Julia stood transfixed, turning this way and that to take in the merry-go-round of color and noise all around her. Émile, on the other hand, put a great deal of effort into appearing blasé as he found a porter to collect their luggage on a hand cart.

  “Come,” said Valfierno to Julia. “But behave yourself. We’re here for much bigger game than silk handkerchiefs and pocket watches.”

  Valfierno led them up the steps to the main level where, after negotiating the throngs of travelers, they passed beneath a massive gold clock through the main entrance. They emerged into a wide, tiled courtyard bathed in sharp sunlight. Julia stood for a moment, looking around. To her left, the mansard-roofed baroque buildings lining the narrow rue de Lille provided a tantalizing preview of the city that lay behind them; to her right, the Pont Solférino leapfrogged across the river on its cast-iron arches. A soft breeze drifting off the water tempered the pungent yet vibrant fragrance of the sprawling city.

  Valfierno wasted no time in engaging the services of a motor taxi driver. They were not fifteen minutes from their destination, but he chose a much longer route to take them on a tour of the central city.

  Following Valfierno’s instructions, the driver took them along the river to the Pont au Double, where they crossed to the Île de la Cité and drove past the great cathedral.

  “Notre-Dame,” Julia said enthusiastically as she peered through the side window. “I’m right, aren’t I.”

  “The spiritual center of all France,” said Valfierno.

  “Looks like the begging center too,” she said, taking note of the line of ragged supplicants—legless, blind, twisted, and hunched over—who lay in wait for the tourists exiting the cathedral.

  “Where are the gargoyles?” she asked, looking upward out of the open taxi window.

  “On the roof, of course,” said Émile. “Where else would they be?”

  They continued across the Pont d’Arcole to the Right Bank, where they turned west and motored past the Louvre and the Jardin des Tuileries. Entering the place de la Concorde, they curved around the obelisk of Luxor rising from the center of the expansive public square.

  “Looks like a copy of the Washington Monument,” commented Julia.

  “If anything, my dear,” Valfierno said mildly, “it would be the other way around.”

  “Anyway,” she said, shrugging, “ours is a lot bigger.”

  Passing between the Horses of Marly, they turned onto the Champs-Élysées leading straight as an arrow up toward the Arc de Triomphe.

  “It’s so wide,” said Julia, marveling at the rows of elm trees interspersed with kiosks and columns plastered with newspaper pages and advertisements.

  “Napoleon wanted his streets wide enough to parade his army on, and too wide for people to build barricades across,” Valfierno explained.

  “He could do whatever he wanted,” added Émile. “After all, he had already conquered most of Europe.”

  “I refer, of course, to Napoleon the Third,” Valfierno corrected him as gently as possible, “Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew.”

  Julia gave Émile a teasing smile. “I suppose it can get confusing with so many of them,” she said.

  Émile fell silent as the taxi joined the circle of motorcars and horse-drawn carriages circling the Arc de Triomphe. After two circuits, Valfierno directed the driver to turn south to the Pont d’Iéna.

  Passing the Trocadéro Palace with its towers like architectural donkey ears, they drove onto the bridge. Before them, the great iron structure named for its architect and builder Gustave Eiffel loomed ahead, dwarfing every other building within sight.

  “I’ve never seen anything so tall,” Julia said, peering up at the intricately framed iron structure. “Or so beautiful.”

  “They say,” Valfierno began, “that the writer Guy de Maupassant hated it so much that he used to eat his dinner every day in its restaurant just so he wouldn’t have to look at it.”

  “Émile,” Julia said in a teasing lilt, “perhaps you should take me there for dinner sometime.”

  Émile made no response.

  “Indeed,” Valfierno added, “there are many who still consider it nothing more than an eyesore, a standing heap of scrap metal.”

  Émile tried to act as if he had seen it all before, but he couldn’t resist craning his neck for a better view of the intricate latticework growing like iron vines climbing to the sky.

  “Napoleon’s final resting place,” Valfierno said with a flourish as they drove past the golden dome of Les Invalides.

  “The nephew or the uncle?” asked Julia eagerly.

  “The uncle,” said an amused Valfierno.

  Their tour almost over, Valfierno directed the driver onto boulevard Saint-Germain.

  “Voilà, le Quartier Latin!” Valfierno announced with a sweep of his hand.

  They were immediately immersed in a bustling hive of activity where every possible stratum of Parisian society
was on display: ladies dressed in the latest style moderne, laden with hatboxes; gentlemen trapped in uniform dark suits showing off their individuality with an endless variety of elaborately sculpted mustaches and beards; young women in coiffes bretonnes, their arms full of dresses, food baskets, or bouquets of flowers, hurrying off to deliver their loads to their household employers; old men sitting beneath striped awnings in front of cafés, solving the problems of the day in a haze of pipe smoke; old women in drab gray, loose-fitting clothing, peeling potatoes and selling vegetables from under wide umbrellas.

  “We’re almost there,” said Valfierno a moment before the driver honked his horn to protest an autobus cutting in front of him on the congested street.

  Valfierno pointed and the driver turned left onto rue de l’Eperon, then immediately continued his turn onto rue du Jardinet. At the end of this quiet narrow street they pulled into the cour de Rohan. As the motor taxi came to a halt on the bumpy cobblestones, Valfierno whispered in the driver’s ear and the man hopped out to remove a bag from the roof of the vehicle. A plump middle-aged woman, her hair sweeping up into a tight bun, emerged from a small gated inner courtyard to greet them.

  “But who is this?” asked Valfierno with theatrical flair as he stepped out of the taxi. “I had expected Madame Charneau to greet us, not some beautiful young chambermaid.”

  “It will take more than flattery to make me forgive you for being gone so long,” Madame Charneau said, smiling as she reached up to corral an errant strand of hair. “But then again, not much more.”

  “You remember Émile,” Valfierno said as the young man stepped out of the taxi.

  Madame Charneau clapped her hands together like a proud mother. “The boy becomes a man. It is so good to see you again, Émile.”

  Émile, more than a little embarrassed, quietly endured her embrace. Behind them, Julia stepped out of the taxi and gazed up at the tall, narrow houses rising from the courtyard like perfectly sculptured canyon walls.