Shawn pulled his chair up to the glass next to Gus’ and lowered the volume on the speakers as O’Hara stepped out to start making calls to museums on the East Coast, which would be opening for business about now.
“Don’t tell me you’re finally going to admit this is interesting,” Gus said.
“Don’t worry. I won’t,” Shawn said. “But maybe it will be in a minute. I think Lassiter got his gun during the break.”
A look of concern flashed over Gus’ face, but he quickly dismissed the thought. “You just watch,” he said. “Professor K is going to tie this entire case up in the next couple of minutes.”
“Professor K couldn’t tie his shoelaces without explaining the entire history of footwear,” Shawn said. “He hasn’t even begun to talk about the last century, let alone the current one.”
“That’s his genius,” Gus said. “He talk and he talks, throwing out more fascinating facts than you think any one man could ever hope to know. And then, just when you think you’re going to float forever on an aimless sea of knowledge, he comes up with the one tiny piece of information that pulls it all together. It’s kind of like what you do in your summations.”
“Except that my summations are never longer, duller, and more pretentious than The Matrix Revolutions,” Shawn said. “In fact, until tonight I didn’t think anything could be.”
“Pretentious?” Gus was astonished. “Professor K doesn’t have to pretend anything. He’s the real deal. Everything he says is valid and important.”
Shawn didn’t say anything. He reached over and flicked the volume back up again. Professor Kitteredge’s voice filled the small room. “You have to understand that according to the “Fifteen Discourses” that Reynolds delivered to students at the Royal Academy, the only way for a young artist to learn to create works of high moral and artistic worth was to copy the old masters and to sketch from-”
Shawn flipped the volume down again. “Valid and important,” he said.
But Gus was leaning forward in his chair, eyes lit up with excitement. “This is it,” he said. “Watch.”
“Watch what?” Shawn said. “Is Lassiter finally going to use his nightstick?”
“Kitteredge is about to make his point,” Gus said. “The one that’s going to tie this whole thing together. And probably even unmask the killer.”
Shawn stared through the glass. All he saw was Kitteredge talking while Lassiter held his head in pain. “How do you know that?”
“Didn’t you catch his tell?” Gus said.
Shawn looked again and this time noticed that Kitteredge’s hand was fishing around in his left coat pocket. After a moment, he pulled out his old meerschaum and knocked it gently on the table.
“You mean the pipe?” Shawn said.
“Every time he makes a significant point, he takes that pipe out of his pocket,” Gus said. “In class, all the students knew they’d better write down whatever he was saying when it came out. Once he moves on to details, the pipe goes back into his pocket. I’m surprised you didn’t catch that.”
Gus turned the volume back up to hear Kitteredge’s voice reaching a crescendo. “In fact, one of the core beliefs of the founding Pre-Raphaelite brothers was that everything Reynolds taught at the Royal Academy was corrupt. They believed that art had to draw its inspiration not from other artists but from truth, from nature, and from the beauty of the world.”
Shawn stifled a yawn. “I did see him playing with the thing,” he said. “It just never occurred to me that any one of his endless sentences was supposed to be more important than any other. Of course now that I understand that the plebiscite brothers hated Reynolds Wrap, or whatever he just said, it all becomes clear.”
“So much for the brilliant powers of observation,” Gus said.
“Observation has nothing to do with it,” Shawn said. “It’s a matter of authorial discrimination. Simply spewing out every stray bit of information lying around is not a sign of wisdom.”
“There is nothing stray about what Professor K is saying,” Gus said. “Something important is about to happen here and now.”
“Wait. You mean something even more exciting than what we just heard?” Shawn said. “I have a hard time imagining what that could be.”
Gus felt a momentary flash of pity for his partner. Shawn was so talented in so many areas, so brilliant about so many subjects, but he was also so completely blind to anything that didn’t fit into his narrow set of interests. He could, as he had attempted to prove earlier in the evening, spend hours discussing every aspect of the cinematic career of a former child star whose major claim to fame was that he’d managed to become a has-been without ever actually having been anything. But there was so much that simply never grabbed him, and he refused to put any effort into anything that wasn’t immediately appealing.
And yet there was so much in life that offered rich, full rewards only after you’d put in a little work. Russian novels were like that, or so he’d heard. Expensive wine and smelly cheese-not that Gus had much of a taste for either type of delicacy. Foreign movies, if the critics were to be believed. And most of all, the study of art history.
But this didn’t seem to be the time for Gus to give Shawn a lecture on the sophisticated pleasures of life. For one thing, Shawn had already sat through the longest lecture either of them had ever heard, and the experience didn’t seem to be inspiring him to study further.
For another, this lecture was about to reach its climax. Gus moved his chair closer to the glass. “This is it,” he said.
“Yes, I can see Lassiter is about to fall over dead from boredom,” Shawn said. “I only hope I can hold out one second longer than him.”
Again, Gus had to repress the desire to educate Shawn. “The pipe comes out whenever Kitteredge has a substantial point to make,” Gus said.
“It’s amazing how much more interesting that is the second time you tell me about it,” Shawn said. “Oh, wait; it isn’t.”
“That can happen easily a dozen times in a normal lecture,” Gus said. “But he’s got another tell, too. When he’s about to make his ultimate point, when he’s about to utter the words that will tie everything he’s said together and astonish you with his brilliance, only then does he bring out his lighter and light up.”
“Which is good, because then Lassiter will have an excuse to throw him in jail forever,” Shawn said. “The no-smoking statutes here are tough.”
“If you’ll apply your justly praised powers of observation, you’ll notice that Professor K’s hand is moving toward his right jacket pocket,” Gus said. “That means the lighter is about to come out. And that means-”
“That he’s almost ready to stop talking?” Shawn said.
“That he’s ready to make his point,” Gus said. “I think we should listen in, don’t you?”
“Why don’t you listen in?” Shawn said. “You can take notes, and then in the morning you can write it all up in a big report. And then I can use that as a pillow in case we’re ever stuck in an observation room all night again.”
Shawn dropped his chin to his chest and pretended to be falling asleep. Gus turned the volume back up.
“… wasn’t afraid of the public’s opinion,” Kitteredge was saying. “He refused to exhibit at a new gallery opened by his friends simply because members of the Royal Academy had pictures there. To him, the only thing that mattered was the truth of the painting itself.”
Shawn mumbled as if in sleep. “Oh, yeah, definitely worth waiting for.”
Gus ignored him and focused all his attention on his old professor. “If Rossetti refused to allow this painting to be shown in public, there had to be a reason,” Kitteredge said. “And it clearly wasn’t an aesthetic issue. We’ve all had a chance to look at the work now, and we’ve seen that it might be his masterpiece. So the only reason it’s been hidden away from sight for one hundred and fifty years is because it contains a truth so powerful, so dangerous, he couldn’t afford to let anyone see it outside a select few.”