“It was touch and go for a while, and I’m guessing Cabenal is sorry I didn’t die—save her and INTERPOL a lot of embarrassment. I lost my job and my spleen, but apparently you don’t need your spleen. Other than that, I’m pretty much in one piece.”

“Jesus. I’m calling that bitch and letting her have it.”

He asked me not to, said it would just cause trouble for both of us.

“She let me think you were dead, Smith. You know what that did to me?”

“Cried like a baby, huh?”

I heard the tease in his voice for the first time. “Worse,” I said though didn’t go into it. I told him about unearthing his list of collectors, making the calls, about Teivel’s threats.

“Are you crazy?” he said.

“No crazier than you.”

“Look, it’s too late. I’m fired, erased. It’s like I never existed.”

“Where are you?”

“My shitty Lyon apartment, where else? But I’m getting out of here.”

“Where to?”

“Don’t know yet. Where does a forty-seven-year-old with no job and no prospects go?”

“The private sector?”

“And what, be a guard in some suburban bank?”

“Suppose I prove you were right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Follow up with these collectors, see what I can find out. Something to show INTERPOL you were onto something big, a way to clear your name.”

“My name? Jesus, Perrone, you’re still a romantic. Nothing you say will sway INTERPOL. I told you it’s too late—and too dangerous.”

I wanted to say You deserve better, all you did, but I knew he was right. I couldn’t save him, had just barely saved myself.

“Just stop what you’re doing,” he said. “I’m not asking. I’m telling you. Stop. You hear me?”

“I hear you.”

His sigh through the phone sounded like a windstorm. “Look, I appreciate it, but it’s no good, and you can’t take the risk. You saw what can happen, remember?”

I remembered.

“Promise me you’ll give it up.”

I promised.

86

That night, I had trouble sleeping. When I did drift off, I had crazy dreams: Smith dying on a Paris street, Jonathan Teivel’s fancy watch melting like a Dalí painting, the Mona Lisa floating upside down. In the morning, I had to remind myself that Smith was alive, and I was pissed I’d done my grieving with booze. I wanted to call Inspector Cabenal and give her hell, but I knew Smith was right, that it would just cause trouble. I thought about Teivel, his barking Wolverine laugh and threats. Smith was right about that too: looking into these guys was dangerous, and I had to stop. Give up the folly and concentrate on myself, my life and career, figure out what I was going to say to the tenure committee and get back to making art.

I opened my laptop, found Smith’s list of art collectors, and deleted it. Then I crumpled the hard-copy list and tossed it into the trash.

Next, I dismantled the altarpiece and emptied the file cabinet—maps of the Louvre with Peruggia’s route, my correspondence, the essays and theories about the theft I’d been collecting for over twenty years, all in the trash. The only thing I kept was the mug shot, though I decided I looked a lot less like him since shaving off the mustache and getting a shorter haircut.