It was late and I tried sleeping again but could not stop thinking, my mind stuck in the past, in Vincent’s head, feeling angry and vulnerable and endangered. It was finally happening—no one needed the real thing, art and artists becoming obsolete.

But I knew something else: that there were people out there willing to kill for actual paintings and surely for the Mona Lisa, even a forgery.

That was it. I was up. No way I’d sleep now.

The attic looked worse than ever. Dust like tumbleweeds, spiderwebs like suspension bridges. I guessed the last person to clean the place was me, age fourteen, and I hadn’t done a good job back then. The steamer trunk was still there, several new layers of dust on it since I’d last opened it. Now I opened it again. More dust, the smell of mildew. I expected to see the rifle, forgetting I’d not only taken it to show to my Kill Van Kull buddies but later sold it at an antique gun convention for thirty dollars.

I had never gone through the trunk—finding the rifle and mug shot had been enough—but now I did. Moth-eaten shirts and pants, a pair of brown boots, the leather desiccated and cracking, a wooden box. Inside, velvet-lined, but whatever jewelry it may have once contained was gone. A couple of rumpled cardboard cartons, one with old-fashioned long johns, the other with two pairs of delicate women’s gloves and a small photo, sepia-toned, of a man and a woman in formal dress. My grandfather and his wife? The trunk’s lining had split, coming away from one side, and something peeked out—an envelope, no stamp or postmark, just a name in now-familiar script: Simon Peruggia. Inside, folded pages, the paper thin and yellowed but otherwise in good shape. I started to read them, but the light was bad, the attic air suffocating.

My bedroom was better, no cobwebs, though my narrow bed was uncomfortable. I ended up stretched out on the floor, using the bed as a headboard.

Dear Simon,

I had written a journal in which I told of my crime. Why I did it. And how. That journal was lost a long time ago. I am writing some of it here again because I want you to know what happened. Because I want you to know the truth about your father.

There were a dozen pages. The first few things I knew and had previously read—Simone’s death, meeting Valfiero, stealing the Mona Lisa, Chaudron’s forgeries, and the bank president, Fournier—much of it abbreviated as if Vincent had been in a hurry to get it down. After that, Vincent wrote of his plans to go to the south of France, again something I knew, which I read quickly. But I slowed down as I started to read the remaining pages.

81

I had walked from the town of Lacoste determined to find Valfiero and Chaudron. And I did. The house with blue shutters sat on a small incline bordered by evergreens. Exactly as the waitress Brigitte had described. A Lorraine-Dietrich was parked in front. The fancy motorcar purchased no doubt with money from the sale of forgeries. I made my way toward the house through bushes and trees. I crouched low. Inched toward a window. Dared a peek. There was a large palette on a wooden table. Paint tubes and brushes. Paintings on the walls. Chaudron’s studio! Two easels stood side by side. Both with Mona Lisa paintings on them! One perfectly painted and finished. Another only half-completed. They had told me all the copies had been made and sold. But they were making more to sell!