“What are you doing?” Canton screamed.
“We’re taking your records and getting out of here since you’ve stopped cooperating.”
Canton’s hand shook as he reached for the glass of soda already on the table and spilled some of it bringing it up to his lips. He took a long gulp and then asked, “What do you want?”
“The men you worked with,” Lucian said. “Who stole the paintings for you? Were you looking for those specific paintings? Did you put the word out? What the hell happened, Canton?” He knew he was bullying the dealer, but he didn’t care anymore.
Canton was hyperventilating, and his skin had turned even redder. Richmond glanced over at Lucian and raised his eyebrows as if to question the man’s reaction-was it a performance or for real?
“I need…” Canton whispered and then stopped. “I need…” Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out an amber pill bottle, thumbed the cap off, shook out a pill and, with trembling fingers, managed to get it into his mouth.
“You all right, Mr. Canton?” Richmond asked.
“It’s my heart.”
Lucian had been able to read the label. The dealer wasn’t in cardiac distress; the pills were anti-anxiety medication. “Then we’ll just take what we need and leave you to rest,” Lucian said as he started dumping the files into garbage bags he and Richmond had brought with them.
Yesterday afternoon the agents had visited Andrew Moreno’s art gallery in Chelsea, and the paperwork they’d confiscated from his office was enough to keep them busy for days. With this load added to it, Lucian figured he’d be working nights and weekends for a while. He’d need to call Emeline from the car and tell her he might not make it to the Met’s reception tonight. They’d talked twice earlier today, and both times her voice had been tight and twisted with fear. The longer the threats continued, the more distraught she became. Lucian knew from cases he’d worked on how incessant worry and fear frayed your nerves. At a certain point you stopped being able to push the anxiety aside. No one survived attacks like the one Emeline was enduring without scars. She’d told him that she’d gone back to work that morning, and so far had gotten two calls, both in the same mechanical voice: Tell anyone what I look like and I’ll kill you before they find me. You and your father, too.
“And he repeated it,” Emeline had said, her voice tight with the effort of holding back tears. “Three times. Just like in the e-mails.”
Lucian reassured her that Broderick and his men were getting close to making an arrest but it was a lie. They hadn’t made any progress. This guy had to be smart to go this long without once slipping up. Did that mean he was smart enough to elude them and get to Emeline? Lucian prayed not. One accident was all they needed. If he just stayed on the phone a few seconds too long or walked by the gallery and lingered an extra second peering in the windows.
“This drawer’s empty,” Richmond said to Lucian as he dropped another five files into a black plastic garbage back and nodded to another file cabinet. “I’ll grab that, you get the rest of the stuff.”
The color in Canton’s face intensified as he watched Lucian move to the desk and pick up the laptop computer. With a tortured “NO” the dealer leaped forward with teeth bared and bit Lucian’s hand.
Richmond jumped Canton, wrestled him to the ground and had him cuffed in less than thirty seconds. Lucian, excruciating pain radiating up his arm, read him his rights then listed the offenses he was going to charge him with.
“I’ll drop the last three and you’ll have a chance at spending at least some of the rest of your life outside a prison, but I want the name of the man or the men you worked with to get the Van Gogh and the Matisse.”
Twenty minutes later, as Richmond drove away, with the dealer handcuffed and whimpering in the backseat, Lucian kept looking down at his hand as if it had betrayed him by being so close to the dealer’s mouth.
SIXTY
Iris Bellmer was bewildered and overcome with remorse. She’d let Malachai hypnotize her with his soft, smooth voice, using her own damn snow globe. Sitting at her desk, trying to make sense of what she’d done and calculate its ramifications, she stared out the window at the tree that filtered the view of the street. The wind was blowing, and one branch kept tapping on the glass almost as if agreeing that what she’d done was unforgivable.
Closing her eyes, she practiced deep breathing for five minutes, inhaling to the count of five, holding the breath to the count of five, then following the same pattern of exhaling, holding and then starting all over again until finally she felt calmer.
When Iris opened her eyes again she knew what she had to do: stop Malachai Samuels from doing anything illegal with the information she’d given him and let James Ryan know that she’d released information about his past-life memories without his approval.
She called her patient first. Ryan’s phone rang three times before his voice mail picked up. Iris had prepared what she was going to say, but to him, not a machine. She just identified herself and asked him to call her at his earliest convenience.
What she had to do next would be more difficult. How could she convince Malachai of anything? What could she say to him that would stop him from interfering with their patients’ lives?
Opening her door, she took a step out into the hallway, surprised to see Malachai and Beryl standing close together talking at the far end. Should she confront him with Beryl there, or wait? Before Iris had a chance to decide, Malachai turned and walked in the opposite direction as Beryl started toward Iris. Should she go after Malachai? He was almost at the staircase that led to lower-level library.
“Are you all right?” Beryl asked.
If Malachai heard his aunt, he didn’t turn around. How many more steps till she could be sure he wouldn’t be able to hear her?
“Iris?”
“Yes?”
“Is something wrong?”
Iris heard a door shut in the distance-the door to the library. She nodded. “Yes.” It came out in a whisper.
SIXTY-ONE
As he walked up the museum’s grand marble staircase, the pull of the palace reached out to Lucian, but it wasn’t a night for sentiment. Passing through the medieval galleries, heading for the American Wing, he was blind to the artwork for the first time that he could remember. Tonight he was going to solve more than one mystery, and as much as it might cause him personal pain, there’d be relief to finally get to the truth. Hard, cold knowledge was the only thing he could trust. The past few weeks had all been a game, and he’d been played. He clenched his teeth against the thought of that and his unremitting headache.
Golden light flooded the Charles Engelhard Court, a glassed-in garden on the park that was home to large-scale sculptures, leaded-glass windows and architectural elements from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There were already at least a hundred guests milling about the three-story atrium, but the space was far from crowded. Lucian recognized and nodded to members of the board of directors. Top-tier museum patrons were there, as well as descendants of the families who had bequeathed the paintings to the Met.
In the center of the room an area was cordoned off by a twelve-foot opaque screen. Behind it, Lucian found Marie Grimshaw repositioning five empty easels. When she saw him she forced a smile. He had the sudden urge to tell her he was sorry-but for what? Everything had turned out the way she and Tyler Weil wanted it to-the paintings rescued, Hypnos safe.
“Congratulations, Agent Glass. In a career dedicated to protecting art, to keeping the treasures of the centuries safe, tonight should be a major celebration for you. Thank you.”
She was right. He should be reveling in what he and Matt had accomplished, but the surprise he’d suffered earlier this afternoon when Oliver Canton finally gave him the name of his accomplices had ruined that. One name meant nothing. The other meant far too much.