The Giaconda Caper
by Bob Shaw
It was a Thursday morning in January—stale and dank as last night’s cigar butts—and my office phone hadn’t rung all week. I was slumped at the desk, waiting out a tequila hangover, when this tall creamy blonde walked in. The way she was dressed whispered of money, and what was inside the dress hinted at my other hobby—but I was feeling too lousy to take much notice.
She set a flat parcel on my desk and said, “Are you Phil Dexter, the private psi?”
I tipped back my hat and gave her a bleak smile. “What does it say on my office door, baby?”
Her smile was equally cool. “It says Glossop’s Surgical Corset Company.”
“I’ll kill that signwriter,” I gritted. “He promised to be here this week for sure. Two months I’ve been in this office, and …”
“Mr Dexter, do you mind if we set your problems on one side and discuss mine?” She began untying the string on the parcel.
“Not at all.” Having lost the initiative, I decided it would be better to improve customer relations. I never saw much sense in private psis trying to talk and act like private eyes, anyway. “How can I help you, Miss …?”
“I’m Carole Colvin.” Her brow wrinkled slightly. “I thought you psi people knew all that sort of thing without being told.”
“It’s a wild talent,” I said in a hollow voice, giving my stock response. “There are forces beyond the control of mere humans.”
It was always necessary at this point to look sort of fey and hag-ridden, so I stared out through the fanlight and thought about the lawsuit my ex-secretary was bringing against me for non-payment of wages. Carole didn’t seem to notice. She finished unwrapping her parcel, took out an unframed oil painting and propped it in front of me.
“What can you tell me about this painting?” she said briskly.
“It’sa good copy of the Mona Lisa,”I replied. “A very clever imitation, but …” My voice faded away of its own accord as the full blast from the canvas hit my extra senses. There was an impression of great age, perhaps five hundred years, and a blurring rush of images—a handsome bearded man in medieval costume, hilly landscapes with dark green vegetation, bronze sculptures, thronged narrow streets of antique cities. Behind this montage, almost obliterated by its brilliance, was the suggestion of a dark place and of a circular wooden frame which might have been part of a large machine.
Carole was regarding me with interest. “It isn’t a copy, is it?”
I dragged my jaw back up to its normal position. “Miss Colvin, I’m just about certain this painting was done by Leonardo da Vinci himself.”
“You mean it’s the Mona Lisa?”
“Well … yes.” I gazed at the canvas, paralysed with awe.
“But that isn’t possible, is it?”
“We’ll soon see.” I pressed the button on my computer terminal and said, “Has the Mona Lisa been stolen from the Louvre in Paris?”
The reply came with electronic swiftness. “I cannot answer that question.”
“Insufficient data?” I said.
“Insufficient funds,” the machine replied. “Until you pay your last three quarterly subscriptions you’re getting no more information out of me.”
I made a rude sign out through the window in the direction I imagined the central computer to lie. “Who needs you?” I sneered. “It would have been in all the papers if the Mona Lisa had been stolen.”
“Then, more fool you for asking,” the machine said. I took my finger off the button and smirked desperately at Carole, wishing I hadn’t tried to put on a display of computerized efficiency.
She looked at me with what seemed to be increasing coldness. “If you are quite finished, I’ll tell you how I got the painting. Or don’t you want to hear?”
“I want to. I want to.” Realizing I was in danger of losing her business, I sat up straight, looking poised and alert.
“My father was an art dealer and he had a small gallery up in Sacramento,” Carole said, folding herself into a chair with an action like honey flowing from a spoon. “He died two months ago and left the business to me. I don’t know much about art, so I decided to sell out the whole thing. It was when the inventory was being made up that I found this painting hidden in a safe.”
“Nice stroke of luck.”
“That remains to be seen. The painting might be worth a few million, or it might be worth a few years in the pen—I want to find out which.”
“And so you came to me! Very wise, Miss Colvin.”
“I’m beginning to wonder about that. For somebody who’s supposed to have a sixth sense you seem a bit deficient in the other five.”
I think that was the moment I fell in love with Carole. The reasoning was that if I could enjoy looking at her while being treated like an idiot child, life should get pretty interesting if I could get her to regard me as an intelligent man. I started on that private project there and then.
“Your father never mentioned the painting to anybody?”
“No—that’s what makes me wonder if something illegal was going on.”
“Have you any idea how he got it?”
“Not really. He was on vacation in Italy last spring, and I remember he seemed rather odd when he got back.”
“In what way?”
“Tense. Withdrawn. Not what you’d expect after a vacation.”
“Interesting. Let’s see if I can pick up something more to go on.” I leaned forward and touched the slightly crazed surface of the painting. Once more there was a strong psychic impulse—images of a balding man I knew to be Carole’s father, bright glimpses of cities. The latter would have been unknown to me had they not been accompanied by the intuitions which elevate the psi talent and make it roughly equal to a course in chiropody as a viable means of earning a crust.
“Rome,” I said. “Your father went to Rome first, but he spent most of his time in and around Milan.”
“That’s correct.” Carole gave me a look of grudging approval. “It appears that you do have some genuine ability.”
“Thanks. Some people think I have nice legs, too.” Her compliment was partly lost on me because I had again half-seen a dark place, like a cavern, and a circular wooden machine. There were distracting undertones of mystery and centuries-old secrets.
“We’re not much further on, though,” Carole said.
“I thought we were doing pretty well.”
“You haven’t answered the big question—did Leonardo paint the Mona Lisa twice?”
“That’s the way it seems to me, Miss Colvin. I don’t know how this will affect the value of the original.”
“The original?”
“I mean, the other one.” I stared at the painting in awe, letting its sheer presence wash over my senses, then I began to get a feeling there was something not quite right about it, something difficult to put a finger on. The Mona Lisa stared back at me, the famous smile playing about her lips just as I remembered it from all the prints I’d seen. Her face was exactly right, the rich medieval background was exactly right, and yet there was some detail of the picture which seemed out of place. Could it, I wondered, be something to do with those plump smooth hands? To impress Carole, I assumed a look of deep, brooding concentration and tried to decide what it was in the painting which was ringing subconscious alarm bells.
“Have you fallen asleep?” Carole said, rapping the desk with an imperious knuckle.
“Of course not,” I replied huffily, and pointed at the Mona Lisa’s hands. “Do these look right to you?”
“You think you could have done better?”
“I mean, in the Louvre painting does she not have one hand sort of cradled in the other one? Instead of separated like that?”
“Could be—I told you I don’t know anything about art.”