The Pegasus Secret (6 page)

Lang made himself swallow hard, giving himself time to dissipate the outrage of having his personal space violated. Bursting in on one or more possibly armed burglars might make for a great scene from a Bruce Willis movie but it wasn’t a move towards a longer, healthier life.

Call the cops? He was reaching for the cell phone on his belt and paused. The Atlanta police? It would take them forever to arrive and if there was no one in his unit, he’d look like a fool.

He turned and went back to the elevators.

At the concierge desk in the lobby, he waited until the pimply-faced kid in the ill-fitting uniform finished making a phone call and turned to him.

Lang shrugged with an embarrassed smile. “I locked myself out.”

“Your number?” The kid was already looking under the desk for one of the skeletons. With the number of geriatric residents, Lang’s problem was not unusual.

On the ride back up, Lang felt a twinge of guilt. If burglars were in the apartment, there was some possibility they were armed. Maybe he should have summoned the
law after all. Involving this young man in a possible robbery, exposing the lad to potential physical harm, wasn’t a nice thing to do. Conversely, facing one or more red- handed felons alone was stupid. Heroes died young.

Accustomed to the idiosyncracies of the wealthy, the concierge never asked how Lang had managed to engage the dead bolt from outside in the hall. Instead, he pushed the door open and gestured Lang inside. “There we are, Mr. Reilly.”

Lang’s eyes were searching the small space as he handed a folded bill over. “Thanks.”

“Thank
you
, sir.” From the tone, Lang must have given him a larger tip than he had anticipated.

Lang noticed nothing unusual until he turned to face the interior wall. The painting was gone. He hurriedly glanced around in the unlikelihood he had misplaced it. How do you lose a canvas that big in an apartment this small? You don’t.

He took two steps, stopping at the counter that separated kitchen from living room. Enjoying the coolness of Mexican tiles on his stomach, Grumps looked up and yawned.

“Great guard dog you are,” Lang muttered as he started to turn towards the bedroom.

He stopped again. Beside Grumps was a large grease spot. The intruders had occupied the dog with something to eat. As verifying the fact, Grumps burped loudly.

“Excuse you, bribe-taker. You better hope they didn’t lace that hunk of meat with rat poison.”

Unabashed, Grumps stretched and belched again.

At first, the bedroom seemed untouched.

Then Lang noticed that one of his silver hairbrushes was on the side of the dresser opposite where he normally left it. A photograph of Dawn faced the room at a slightly different
angle. Someone had been careful but not careful enough.

Stepping around the bed, Lang opened the single drawer of the bedside table. The Browning nine-millimeter he had carried for years was where he kept it. Besides the gun and a box of ammunition, the drawer was empty.

Lang was certain he had put the Polaroid and appraisal of the picture there for temporary safekeeping. Who would steal a Polaroid?

The memory of the smoldering ruin in the Place des Vosges was his answer: someone who wanted to leave no trace of that picture.

He shook his head. Stealing the painting and the photo . . .

Lang took a quick inventory of his home. A few items were an inch or so out of place but nothing else was missing. Perhaps the disappearance of the three items made a sort of illogical sense. The thief had been unhurried but left the sterling silverware, a pair of gold cuff links and studs, and the pistol. The purpose of the break-in had clearly been the Poussin and all evidence of it.

Why?

Lang had no idea but every intention of finding out.

Atlanta
The next day

Lang was waiting at Ansley Galleries when it opened the next morning. The same purple-haired girl was behind the counter with the same bored expression.

“Our copy?” she asked. “Good thing we keep copies of all our appraisals, like I told you. You’d be surprised how many people keep ’em in the house. There’s a fire or something and both the art and the appraisal’s gone.”

“And the Polaroid,” Lang asked, “you said you keep an extra of it, too?”

She nodded, chewing a wad of gum. “Yeah, the Polaroid, too.”

He smiled weakly and shrugged, a man embarrassed by his own ineffectiveness. “Dumb me. Can’t remember where I put the envelope with them in it. Be happy to pay for copies.”

The gum snapped. “No problem.”

A minute later she was back. The copy of the photograph, though not in color, was remarkably clear. He handed her a twenty.

She shook her head. “Happy to help. You lose that, we’ll charge for the next set of copies.”

Outside, he pretended to search his pockets for car keys while he checked up and down the street. If there were watchers, they were out of sight.

Atlanta
An hour later

“High Museum as in art museum?” Sara asked incredulously. “You want me to get the number of the art museum?”

Lang settled behind his desk, speaking through the open door. “What’s the big surprise? I go to the museum, theater, ballet, et al, regular culture vulture. You don’t remember my getting tickets for you for the opening of the Matisse exhibit?”

Sara shook her head without a gray hair moving out of place. “Lang, that was years ago. And it was one of your clients who got the tickets.”

“Just find out who the director is, okay?”

Two hours later, Lang parked in the MARTA lot behind what appeared to be white building blocks dumped into a random pile by a giant child. The contemporary edifice had to be one of the ugliest in a town not known for its architectural treasures. Lang’s theory was that Sherman’s destruction of the city a century and a half before had given Atlanta an atavistic insensitivity to structural aesthetics. The High Museum was named for the donors of the site,
the High family, not for any preeminence in the art world. In fact, the concrete and glass housed a collection surprising only in its modesty when compared to similar institutions in comparable cities.

Lang passed by the circular ramp inside the main hall and took an elevator to the top floor. Exiting, he passed a modern mural on canvas that an alert janitorial crew anywhere else would have recognized as a painter’s drop cloth and hauled outside to the Dumpsters. At the end, he found a door marked “Administrative Offices.”

Lang had the impression he had stepped through Alice’s looking glass. Hair of every color, rings in every visible orifice, clothes from
Star Wars
. The clerk at Ansley Galleries had been conservative in comparison.

A young woman with half her head shaved and polished, the other covered by Astroturf-green hair, glanced up from the computer terminal on her desk. “May I help you?”

“I’m Langford Reilly. I have an appointment with Mr. Seitz.”

The woman jabbed a dagger-length fingernail painted an ominous black. “In there.” She picked up a phone. “Mr. Reilly’s here to see you.”

A man stepped from a doorway. Lang wasn’t sure what he had expected but Mr. Seitz wasn’t it. Instead, he was normal looking. Well-tailored dark suit, red power tie, shiny black wingtips. He was slender, just under six feet tall. Early forties, judging by the dove-wings of gray over his ears. His chiseled face had recently seen the beach. Or the inside of a tanning booth.

A gold Rolex competed in dazzle with jeweled cuff links as he extended a manicured hand. “Jason Seitz, Mr. Reilly.”

“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” Lang said. “Quite a colorful crew you have here.”

His eyes followed Lang’s stare. “Art students. We try to
hire from the art school,” he said as if that explained the costumes. “Won’t you step this way?”

They entered an office that was as traditional as the employees outside were weird. Seitz indicated a leather wing chair where Lang could admire the wall of photographs: Seitz shaking hands with or hugging local business leaders, politicians and celebrities. He slipped behind a dining room table–sized desk littered with snapshots of paintings, sculptures and some other objects Lang didn’t immediately recognize.

Seitz leaned back, made a steeple of his fingers and said, “I usually don’t have the pleasure of meeting with people I don’t know, but Ms. . . .”

“Mitford—Sara Mitford, my secretary.”

Seitz nodded. “Ms. Mitford was quite insistent, said it was urgent. Fortunately, I had a cancellation. . . .”

His gaze had the practiced sincerity of someone used to soliciting money. It fitted nicely with the favor he wanted Lang to know he was doing him.

“I really appreciate your taking the time. I’m sure running this place keeps you busy.”

The museum director smiled. Lang would have been astonished had he shown anything but perfect teeth. “Actually, the board of directors runs the museum. I am their humble servant.”

“Yeah. Well . . .” Uncertain how to respond to the ill- fitting humility, Lang opened his briefcase and leaned forward to hand the copy of the Polaroid across the expanse of mahogany. “I was wondering if you could tell me about that.”

Seitz frowned, squinting at the picture. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Les Bergers d’Arcadie
, Nicholas Poussin. Or at least a copy of it.”

Seitz nodded. “Mid–seventeenth-Century French, if I recall.
The original of that picture hangs in the Louvre. What specifically is it you want to know?”

Lang had what he thought was a plausible explanation. “I’m not sure. That is, I’m a lawyer and I have a case involving . . .”

The director held up his hands, palms outward. “Whoa, Mr. Reilly! The museum is not in a position to authenticate art for individuals. As an attorney, I’m sure you can understand the liability issues.”

Lang shook his head, eager to calm what he recognized as a bad case of legal anxiety syndrome. “I apologize. I didn’t make myself clear. All I want is to learn the history of the painting, what it’s supposed to depict.”

Seitz was only marginally calmed. “I’m afraid I can’t be of much help.” He whirled his chair around, removing a book from the antique table behind him that served as a credenza. Thumbing through it, he continued. “I can say, I think, that what you have there is a picture of a copy, and not a particularly authentic copy, either. Ah, there . . . Not quite the same, is it?”

He was pointing to a photo of a similar picture. At first Lang saw no difference. He looked more closely. The background was smoother; there was no upside down profile of Washington.

“Religious art, late Renaissance, not my specialty,” Seitz continued, shutting the book with a thump. He brought Lang’s copy closer to his face. “Those letters on the structure, they look like Latin.”

Lang moved to look over his shoulder. “I think so, yes.”

“Obviously, they mean something. For that matter, the whole painting may well be symbolistic. Artists of that era often had messages in their paintings.”

“You mean, like a code?”

“Sort of, but less sophisticated. For instance, you’ve seen
a still life, flowers or vegetables with a bug or two, perhaps a wilted blossom?”

Lang shrugged noncommittally. It wasn’t the sort of art he would remember.

“It was popular about the time Poussin painted. A certain flower or plant—rosemary for memory, for example. A beetle might be reminiscent of an Egyptian scarab, symbolic of death or the afterlife or whatever.”

Lang went back and sat down. “So you’re saying this painting has a message of some sort.”

This time it was the director who shrugged. “I’m saying it’s possible.”

“Who might know?”

Seitz slowly spun his chair to face the window behind him and gazed out in silence for a moment. “I don’t really have an idea.” He flashed the Rolex. “And I fear we’re running out of time.”

Lang didn’t budge from his seat. “Give me a name, if you would. Somebody likely to be familiar with Poussin, preferably somebody who might be able to decipher whatever symbolism there might be. Believe me, it’s important. This is no academic exercise.”

Seitz turned back to stare at him, a frown tugging at his mouth, no doubt because he wasn’t used to being delayed. Then he returned to the row of books from which he had taken the first one before snatching another one up and paging through it, too.

“It would appear,” the art director said, “that the leading authority on Poussin and on late Renaissance religious art, too, is a Guiedo Marcenni. He’s written quite a lot about your man Poussin.”

Lang pulled a legal pad out of his briefcase. “And where do I find Mr. Marcenni?”

The frown had become a sardonic smile. “Not ‘mister,’
but ‘Fra.’ Brother Marcenni is a monk, an art historian with the Vatican Museum. Vatican, as in Rome.” He stood. “Now I really must ask you to excuse me, Mr. Reilly. One of the young ladies will show you out.”