The rest of the night, he says, is a blur. He arrived at the north of campus to find police cars near Bill's office at Dickinson. After asking enough questions, he was driven to the medical center, where someone asked him to identify the body. Tart showed up at the hospital not long after, giving a second identification, but before he and Paul could speak, officers separated them for questioning. The police wanted to know about his relationship with Stein and Taft, about the last time he saw Bill, about where he was at the time of the murder. Paul cooperated in a daze. When they finally released him, they asked him not to leave campus, and said they'd be in touch. Eventually he made his way toward Dod, but stayed on the outside steps for a while, just wanting to be alone.
Finally, we discuss the conversation we had with Stein in the Rare Books Room, which Paul says the police took down in full. As he talks about Bill, about how agitated Stein was at the library, about the friend he's lost, Paul gives little sign of emotion. He still hasn't recovered from the shock.
Tom, he says finally, when we're back in our bedroom, I need a favor.
Of course, I say. Name it.
I need you to come with me.
I hesitate. Where?
The art museum.
He's changing into a dry set of clothes.
Now? Why?
Paul rubs at his forehead, working out an ache. I'll explain on the way.
When we return to the common room, Charlie looks at us like we've lost our minds. At this hour? he asks. The museum's closed.
I know what I'm doing, Paul says, already making for the hallway.
Charlie gives me a heavy look, but says nothing as I follow Paul out the door.
The art museum sits like an old Mediterranean palace across the courtyard from Dod. From the front, where we entered a few hours earlier, it's just a stumpy modern building with a Picasso sculpture on the front lawn that looks like a glorified birdbath. When you approach from the side, though, the newer elements give way to older ones, pretty windows in little Romanesque arches, and red roof-tiles that peek out beneath tonight's canopy of snow. Under different circumstances, the view from here would be charming. Under different circumstances, it might be a picture Katie would take.
What are we doing? I ask.
Paul is trudging a path before me in his old workman's boots.
I found what Richard thought was in the diary, he says.
It sounds like the middle of a thought whose beginning he's kept to himself.
The blueprint?
He shakes his head. I'll show you when we get inside.
I'm walking in his footsteps now to keep the snow out of my pant legs. My eyes keep returning to his boots. Paul worked at the museum loading docks our freshman summer, moving incoming and outgoing exhibits onto trucks. The boots were a necessity then, but tonight they leave dirty tracks in the moon-white of the courtyard. He looks like a boy in men's shoes.
We arrive at a door by the west face of the museum. Beside it is a tiny keypad. Paul dials in his docent's password and waits to see if it works. He used to give tours at the art museum, but finally had to take a job in the slide library because the docents weren't paid.
To my surprise, the door opens with a beep and a whisper of a click. I'm so used to the medieval-sounding bolts of the dorm doors, I almost don't hear it. He leads me into a small antechamber, a security room supervised by a guard behind a plate-glass window, and suddenly I feel trapped. After signing a visitation form on a clipboard, though, and pressing our university IDs against the glass, we're cleared to enter the docent's library beyond the next door.
That's it? I say, expecting more of a shakedown at this hour.
Paul points to a video camera on the wall, but says nothing.
The docent's library is unimpressive-a few shelves of art history books donated by other guides to help prepare for tours-but Paul continues toward an elevator around the corner. A large sign posted on the sliding metal doors says faculty, staff, and security only, students and docents NOT permitted without escort. The words students and docents have both been underlined in red.
Paul is looking somewhere else. He pulls a key ring from his pocket and plugs one of them into a slot in the wall. When he turns it to the right, the metal doors slide open.
Where'd you get that?
He leads me into the elevator, then presses a button. My job, he says.
The slide library gives him access to archival rooms in the museum. He is so careful about his work that he has earned almost everyone's trust.
Where are we going? I say.
Up to the image room. Where Vincent keeps some of his slide carousels.
The elevator discharges us on the main floor of the museum. Paul guides me across it, ignoring the paintings he's pointed out to me a dozen times before-the vast Rubens with its dark-browed Jupiter, the unfinished Death of Socrates with the old philosopher reaching for his cup of hemlock. Only when we pass the paintings Curry brought for the trustees1 exhibit do Paul's eyes wander.
We reach the door to the slide library, and he produces the keys again. One of them shifts quietly into place, and we enter the darkness.
Over here, he says, pointing toward an aisle of shelves lined with dusty boxes. Each box contains a slide carousel. Behind another locked door, in a large room I've seen only once, rests much of the university's collection of art slides.
Paul finds the set of boxes he's been searching for, then lifts one from the stack and places it on the shelf before him. A note taped to the side, written in a sloppy hand, says MAPS: ROME. He takes the top off and carries the box to the small open space near the entrance. From another shelf he produces a slide projector, which he plugs into a wall socket near the ground. Finally, with the flick of a switch, a blurry image appears on the opposite wall. Paul adjusts the focus until it sharpens into position.
Okay, I say. Now tell me what we're doing here.
What if Richard was right? he says. What if Vincent stole the diary from him thirty years ago?
He probably did. What does it matter now?
Paul brings me up to speed. Imagine you're in Vincent's position. Richard keeps telling you the diary is the only way to understand the Hypnerotomachia. You think he's blowing smoke, just a college kid with an art history degree. Then someone else shows up. Another scholar.
Paul says it with a certain respect. I gather he's referring to my father.
Suddenly you're the odd man out. Both of them say the diary is the answer. But you've painted yourself into a corner. You've told Richard the diary is useless, that the portmaster was a charlatan. And more than anything, you hate being wrong. What do you do now?
Paul is trying to convince me of a possibility I've never had trouble accepting: that Vincent Taft is a thief.
I get it, I say. Goon.
So you somehow steal the diary. But you can't make anything of it, because you've been looking at the Hypnerotomachia all wrong. Without the ciphered messages from Francesco, you don't know what to do with the diary. What then?
I don't know.
You're not going to throw it away, he says, ignoring me, just because you don't understand it.
I nod my agreement.
So you keep it. Somewhere safe. Maybe the lockbox in your office.
Or in your house.
Right. Then, years later, this kid comes along, and he and his friend start making progress on the Hypnerotomacbia. More than you expected. In fact, more than you made in your prime. He starts finding the messages from Francesco.
You start thinking the diary might be useful after all.
Exactly.
And you don't tell the kid about it, because then he would know you stole it.