The Icon Thief (34 page)

“The money isn’t important. I can make up the shortfall. What matters more is trust. It makes us wonder how useful you really are.” Lermontov paused. “Did you ever say my name over the phone?”

“Never on the phone,” Sharkovsky said. “All over encrypted email, like you wanted.”

As he spoke, he studied the gallery owner. There had been a time when he had seen Lermontov as little more than a revenue stream, a means of channeling art, which arrived in Brighton Beach along the same routes as guns and stolen merchandise, to collectors throughout the city. It had not taken him long, however, to figure out where the money went. Ever since, he had been unable
to stifle a secret shudder, a protective tightening of his insides, whenever he saw this man.

“I have one piece of good news,” Lermontov said. “Anzor Archvadze is dead.”

Sharkovsky felt a faint sense of satisfaction. “The Scythian knew his business.”

“But there are complications. Natalia Onegina has been arrested, along with Kostava. If the police listen to what they have to say, sooner or later, they will become interested in this painting. We need to tie up the loose ends. One is the Scythian. You’ve repeatedly failed to take care of him.”

Sharkovsky tried to sound dismissive. “He doesn’t know your name. He knows nothing of our arrangement. It’s only a matter of time before he makes a mistake. When he does, the painting will be ours.”

“That isn’t good enough. We need to tighten the screws. Do you have the gun?”

Sharkovsky drew the revolver from his belt. After Ilya had lost it, he had retrieved it from under the boards. “Here it is.”

“Good.” Rising from his desk, Lermontov headed for the door. “Come with me.”

They went down the hall, past a row of canvases in wooden racks. There were drying streaks of water on the floor. Going to a closed door at the end of the corridor, Lermontov opened it, then switched on the lights.

Sharkovsky looked over the gallerist’s shoulder. Beyond the door lay a restroom with a toilet and sink. Lying on the floor was a young man’s body. He had been shot once in the back, with the slug emerging cleanly through
an exit wound in his chest, and his eyes, at the level of the tile, were halfway open. Sharkovsky had never seen him before, but knew at once who it was.

At his side, Lermontov had donned a pair of gray leather gloves. “Give me the gun.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Sharkovsky handed him the revolver. Lermontov took it, checked the cylinder, then aimed it carefully at the body. When he fired, there was a wet thump, and the bullet lodged in the dead man’s shoulder, caught by the hard blade of the scapula.

Lermontov handed the gun back, then went over to the sink, on which a wallet, keys, and cell phone had been placed. He gave them to Sharkovsky. “The boy’s address is in his wallet. Go to his house and destroy all his notes. Don’t overthink it. Burn his papers and get his computer. Then I need you to take care of the girl. The same gun. You follow me?”

Sharkovsky nodded, understanding at once. Once the bodies had been found, ballistics would link them to the gun that killed Misha. Since both victims had witnessed the heist at the mansion, the police would assume that Ilya was simply cleaning house. “How do I find her?”

“I’ll figure out when she’s going to be home. She’s been calling the boy all morning. Keep his phone in case she tries him again. If necessary, we can text her to set up a meeting. But don’t use it to call me. Get a disposable phone, then contact me once you have the number.”

Sharkovsky pocketed the cell phone and the remaining items. “And after that?”

“I can get you to London. What happens next isn’t my concern. But you still need to prove that you deserve
my protection.” Lermontov looked down at the body. “Now get out of my sight. I have work to do.”

Turning aside, Sharkovsky wanted to say something that would cause the gallerist to remember him, but in the end, he remained silent. He left by the front door, which locked automatically. Although nothing of his former life remained, he was comforted by the fact that he had a destination, a future, a chance to use his hands. It was almost enough to make him feel young again.

As he headed for where he had parked, he did not see the car at the curb halfway up the block, or the man watching him through the windshield. Ilya was about to follow on foot when he saw Sharkovsky enter the parking garage. Straightening up in his seat, he kept an eye on the ramp. He had been parked there for the past two hours. The car had been rented at the airport, using the identity documents and credit card that he had recovered from the binding of the
Sefer Yetzirah
.

He had known that Sharkovsky would appear sooner or later. The night before, when he had examined the computer at the club, the message from the gallery had stood out at once. Sharkovsky would need a paymaster. While pondering the purpose of the heist, and the larger system of which it was a part, Ilya had concluded that the paymaster could only be a member of the art world.

The pickup truck appeared at the ramp. As it rolled down to the curb, Ilya started his own engine. When the truck was half a block away, he pulled out into the street. He could see the back of Sharkovsky’s head through the window as they turned onto Park Avenue, heading south. They were going downtown.

M
addy lay on the floor of the study, looking up at the ceiling, a scrap of paper clutched in one hand. A few days earlier, Ethan had hung a snow shovel from a cord next to the overhead light. Now it drifted in a slow circle, blade downward, the only whisper of movement in the otherwise deserted apartment. Maddy watched it. The shovel cast an expanding and contracting shadow across her face as it turned in the air. She watched it some more.

As the shovel described its perfect circle, it seemed to her that there was something obscene in its continued motion. She rose, back stiff, and took the shovel down. Looking for a place to put it, she finally leaned it against the inside of the closet. It was not the only readymade in the room. An antique bottle rack with five tiers of hooks stood at attention near the door.

A pack of cigarettes was lying on the windowsill. After cracking the window, she slid out a cigarette and lit it, using a coffee cup by the laptop as an ashtray. A crime scene photo of the Black Dahlia murder had been posted above the desk. Maddy stared at it. In the hour since she had entered the apartment, she had gone through everything, searching for whatever Ethan had meant her to
see, but so far, she had found nothing resembling an answer.

What she had found, instead, were chess problems. Ethan had made copies of all Duchamp’s writings on chess, including his one published book on the game, which Maddy now leafed through again. It described an extraordinarily rare endgame situation, never encountered in regular play, in which only the white and black kings remained on the board, along with a pawn or two. With the rest of the men eliminated, it came down to a duel between two pieces, the last ones standing. And the best possible outcome for black, it seemed, was a draw.

She put the book down. It wasn’t hard to see why Ethan had become fixated on chess. The title
Étant Donnés
, or
Given
, came from the language of geometric proofs. Given a diagram and a set of assumptions, you made a series of deductions until you had proven a theorem. A chess problem was not so different. It was a diagram of a game in progress, paused before a decisive moment. The challenge was to figure out what came next. And Duchamp’s last message, as embodied in the installation, seemed to depend on the same process of reasoning.

And that was the trouble. If
Étant Donnés
was a chess problem, as Ethan’s notes implied, then her task was to figure out what the next move should be. But this brought her up against an insurmountable obstacle. She didn’t know anything about chess. She barely knew how to move the pieces.

As Maddy looked around the room, she found herself wondering if Duchamp would really have played by the rules. His entire career had been devoted to
undermining convention, so perhaps the answer lay outside the game itself. You could knock the pieces from the board with a sweep of the hand, or unplug the chess computer, or shoot your opponent in the heart. Like severing the Gordian Knot. Or like Solomon, ready to cut the baby in half—

She sat upright in her chair. For a moment, she felt as if the world had tilted sideways. Before her was the crime scene photo that Ethan had posted above his desk. It showed the murder victim, Elizabeth Short, lying dead in a field, cut in half at the waist. Maddy stared at the picture, concentrating on the insight that was hovering just out of reach, and finally managed to grasp it.

Duchamp, she saw, had left the tableau incomplete. He had known it would evoke the Black Dahlia murder, but had not taken his reconstruction to its logical conclusion. Elizabeth Short’s body had been cut in half, but the body in the installation was whole. That was the next move. The scene had been paused before its climax. And to complete it, the body had to be cut in two.

She remembered the readymade that Duchamp had constructed with Walter Arensberg. A ball of twine had been sandwiched between two pieces of metal, but beforehand, Arensberg had inserted an object inside the ball without telling Duchamp what it was. To see what was inside, you had to cut it in half, like the Gordian Knot. And if Duchamp had done something similar with the installation, it wasn’t hard to guess what kind of information it might contain.

As she looked at the Black Dahlia, the picture seemed to dissolve before her eyes, and then the world went away. When her vision cleared, she found that she was
seated at Ethan’s laptop, on which she had opened two windows. One displayed the hours for the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The other was a bus schedule. If she left soon, she could be there an hour before it closed.
Étant Donnés
had an alcove of its own, and it was usually deserted, so she would have it all to herself—

For the first time, Maddy clearly saw what she was contemplating. She closed the browser window as if slamming it shut, then looked at the photo again. “What am I thinking?” she whispered. “What am I really thinking?”

She was still trying to answer this question when she heard the door open downstairs.

Relief flooded her body. Rising from the desk, she went onto the landing. The apartment was on two levels, the bedroom and study upstairs, the living room on the ground floor. She was already on the stairwell, ready to tell Ethan that she was here, when she caught a glimpse of the man who had entered the apartment. His back was turned, and she saw him for only a moment, but it was more than enough time to see that it was not Ethan at all.

She backed up from the stairwell. When the foyer was out of sight, she paused, heart juddering, listening for steps on the stairs. Instead, she heard the door swing shut. Downstairs, floorboards creaked as the stranger moved into the living room. There was no sign that he had heard her. At least not yet.

Then she saw that there was no way out. The front door was within sight of the living room. The windows of the study were covered in bars. And the fire escape was at the other end of the house.

Even as she finished this train of thought, the stranger began to climb the stairs.

Maddy retreated into the study. As the footsteps drew closer, her eyes fell on the closet. There was no time to think. Going to the closet, she squeezed inside and pulled the door shut, one trembling hand on the knob.

She had hoped that the stranger would go into the bedroom, clearing her way to the stairs. Instead, he entered the study. Through the gap between door and jamb, she could see the desk by the window. A pencil line of smoke hung in the air. She had forgotten to put out her cigarette.

A man came into view. He was old, perhaps sixty, wearing a pair of wraparound sunglasses. He surveyed the room, eyes passing briefly across the closet, and finally went to the desk, riffling through the papers. Then he moved out of her field of vision. She heard a low squeak of metal and a soft click, then felt the air grow warm. He had turned on the gas fireplace.

Returning to the desk, he scooped up an armful of notes, then vanished from sight again. As he came back for more, Maddy smelled burning paper. She watched as he took another stack. Then another. And another.

Soon the room stank of smoke. The man went over to the window, then paused. From this angle, she couldn’t see his face.

Then she saw him pick up the cup with her cigarette inside. It was still smoldering.

Putting the cup down, the stranger took a step forward, disappearing from her line of sight. Maddy, hands groping, felt something cool and heavy at her side. It was the handle of the shovel.

Her fingers had scarcely closed around the shovel when the closet door flew open.

The man stood in front of her, a hand on the knob,
close enough for her to see herself in his glasses. In his surprised face, she saw recognition. He knew her. For a single intake of breath, they stood eye to eye—

—and before he could come any closer, she smashed the shovel against his face.

He fell back. After a heartbeat, blood began to flood from his nose. Maddy emerged from the closet, the shovel in her hands. The man was clawing for something in his belt. She saw the taped handle of a revolver.

“
Fuck off!
” The words exploded from her lips as she struck him on the wrist, driving his hand away from the gun. She hit him on the head, denting the shovel’s blade, a hot line of pain whipsawing up her right arm.

The man fell to his knees. Maddy swung at him again, connecting with the crown of his skull, then turned to run. Before she could take a step, a hand shot out and seized her ankle. She fell forward, fumbling the shovel, and knocked her head against the floor, an abyss stretching between her and the stairs.

The hand around her ankle tightened, the fingers sinking in savagely. She rolled over, forehead aching from where it had struck the floor. The bottle rack stood at eye level. Without thinking, she picked up the bottle rack with both hands, muscles shrieking, and swung it toward the stranger’s left temple.