Brigitte took a moment to look behind her, then leaned down again, whispering. “He lives in an old stone house with blue shutters and tall evergreens on either side, about two miles south of town. It is the only house for miles. And the other man, the artist you described, he is there too.”

Vincent thanked her, taking hold of her hand. He wanted to press it against his cheek, to call her Simone, if just for a minute.

She let him hold her hand a moment, then gently slid it out, and when he looked up, her face was flushed before she hurried away.

Outside, the damp and drizzle had not let up. Vincent tucked the journal into the waistband of his trousers and pulled his jacket over it. He peeked through the café’s window for one last look at Brigitte. He felt embarrassed by his actions with such a young woman and walked quickly past the small shops that lined the town’s main street until he came to the old stone wall and passed through the archway. Here, the sidewalks gave way to a dirt road.

He felt a combination of excitement and rage, which he had been tamping down for months. Now, as he walked, he let it fuel him. He only wanted what he was owed, but he was prepared to fight for it, the switchblade in his pocket hammering against his thigh with each step.

The clouds parted, and rays of sun illuminated the stone house with blue shutters. It stood alone on an incline, the tall evergreens the waitress, Brigitte, had described standing like sentries on either side.

Vincent tugged the journal out for one last entry. “Trovati!” he wrote. I found them!

71

“Holy shit!” Smith was up, lighting a cigarette. “So what’s next? Did he go to Paris? Did he sell the painting?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s it, all he wrote.”

“You kidding? Fuck. Well, at least we got the most important info, how to identify the forged Mona Lisa paintings.”

It was true, and what I’d come here to find out. So why did I feel a hollowness in my gut and an overwhelming sense of loss?

Smith was already planted in front of his laptop, fingers on the keyboard. “I need to run a check on this Fournier,” he said. “Maybe there’s something in my INTERPOL databank.”

“A hundred years later?”

“You never know.” He typed for a minute. “Nope, nothing on the name Georges Fournier.” A couple more minutes of typing, then he turned the laptop around.

“What am I looking at?”

“Google Maps, a street view.”

A grand-looking house with a silver-domed roof filled most of the screen.

“The banker’s house… It’s still there?”

“Yeah,” Smith said, “and tomorrow, we go check it out.”

72

“I’ll do the talking,” Smith said, then raised the knocker, which was large and made of metal, possibly iron, the face of a horned creature with a heavy ring that hung from its mouth. It looked old, expensive, and a little intimidating, like everything about the domed house.