“Do you know him?” Young asks.
I opt for the truth. “No.” I hand the photograph back. “Who is he?”
“The victim.”
“Yes, I figured that, thank you. His name, I mean.”
The agents exchange a glance. “We don’t know.”
“Did you ask the tenant?”
“It is our belief,” Young says, “that he is the tenant.”
I wait.
“This tower room was purchased almost thirty years ago by an LLC using an untraceable shell company.”
Untraceable. I know this all too well. I use similar financial instruments often, not so much to avoid taxation, though that is often a fringe benefit. In my case—as it appears was the case for our late hoarder—such actions are more about anonymity.
“No identification?” I say.
“We haven’t found one yet.”
“The building employees—”
“He lived alone. Deliveries were left at the bottom of the steps. The building has no security cameras in the upstairs corridors, or if they do, they aren’t admitting it. Co-op fees were paid on time from the LLC. According to the doormen, Hermit—that was their nickname for him—was a big-time recluse. He went out rarely and when he did, he would wrap his face in a scarf and leave via a secret basement exit. The manager just found him this morning after the smell started wafting down to the floor below.”
“And no one in the building knows who he is?”
“Not so far,” Young says, “but we’re still going door-to-door.”
“So the obvious question,” I say.
“That being?”
“Why am I here?”
“The bedroom.”
Young seems to expect me to reply. I don’t.
“Come with us.”
As we start to the right, I can see the view of the Natural History Museum’s giant round planetarium across the street, and to the left, Central Park in all its glory. My apartment too has a rather enviable view of the park, though the Dakota is only nine stories high while here we are somewhere above the twentieth floor.
I am not easily surprised, but when I enter the bedroom—when I see the reason why they brought me here—I pull up. I do not move. I just stare. I fall into the past, as though the image in front of me is a time portal. I am an eight-year-old boy sneaking my way into Granddad’s parlor at Lockwood Manor. The rest of my extended family are still out in the garden. I wear a black suit and stand by myself on the ornate parquet floor. This is before the family destruction or perhaps, looking back on it now, this is the very moment of the first fissure. It is Granddad’s funeral. This parlor, his favorite room, has been over-sprayed with some kind of cloying disinfectant, but the familiar, comforting smell of Granddad’s pipe still dominates. I relish it. I reach out with a tentative hand and touch the leather of his favorite chair, almost expecting him to materialize in it, cardigan sweater, slippers, pipe, and all. Eventually, my eight-year-old self works up the courage to hoist myself up to sit in the wingback chair. When I do, I look up at the wall above the fireplace, just as Granddad so often did.
I know that Young and Lopez are watching me for a reaction.
“At first,” Young says, “we thought it had to be a forgery.”
I continue to stare, just as I did as an eight-year-old in that leather chair.
“So we grabbed an art curator from the Met across the park,” Young continues. The Met being shorthand for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “She wants to get this off this wall and run some tests, just to be positive, but she’s pretty certain—this is the real deal.”
The hoarder’s bedroom, as opposed to the rest of the tower, is neat, tidy, spare, utilitarian. The bed against the wall is made. There is no headboard. The side table is bare except for a pair of reading glasses and a leather-bound book. I now know why I was brought here—to see the only thing hanging on the wall.
The oil painting simply called The Girl at the Piano by Johannes Vermeer.
Yes, that Vermeer. Yes, that painting.
This masterpiece, like most of the only thirty-four Vermeer paintings in existence, is small, a foot and a half tall by a foot and four inches wide, though it packs an undeniable punch in its simplicity and beauty. This Girl, purchased nearly a hundred years ago by my great-grandfather, used to hang in the parlor of Lockwood Manor. Twenty-plus years ago, my family loaned this painting, valued in excess of $200 million by today’s standards, along with the only other masterpiece we owned, Picasso’s The Reader, to the Lockwood Gallery in Founders Hall on the campus of Haverford College. You may have read about the nighttime burglary. Over the years, there have been constant false sightings of both masterpieces—most recently, the Vermeer on a yacht belonging to a Middle Eastern prince. None of these leads (and I’ve checked several personally) panned out. Some theorized that the theft was the work of the same crime syndicate who stole thirteen works of art, including works by Rembrandt, Manet, Degas, and yes, a Vermeer, from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
None of the stolen works from either robbery has ever been recovered.
Until now.
“Any thoughts?” Young asks.
I had put up two empty frames in Granddad’s parlor, both as a homage to what was taken and a promise that his masterpieces would someday be returned.
Now that promise, it seems, will be at least half fulfilled.
“The Picasso?” I ask.
“No sign of it,” Young says, “but as you can see, we still have a lot to look through.”
The Picasso is far larger—over five feet tall and four feet wide. If it was here, chances seem strong that it would have been found already.
“Any other thoughts?” Young asks.
I gesture toward the wall. “When can I bring it home?”
“That’ll take some time. You know the drill.”
“I know a renowned art curator and restorer at NYU. His name is Pierre-Emmanuel Claux. I would like him to handle the piece.”
“We have our own people.”
“No, Special Agent, you do not. In fact, per your own admission, you grabbed a random person from the Met this morning—”
“Hardly a random—”
“This is not a big ask,” I continue. “My person is educated in how to authenticate, handle, and if necessary, restore a masterpiece like few people in the world.”
“We can look into it,” Young says, trying to move us past this topic. “Any other thoughts?”
“Was the victim strangled or was his throat cut?”
They exchange another glance. Then Lopez clears his throat and says, “How do—?”
“The sheet was covering his neck,” I say. “In the photograph you showed me. That was done, I surmise, to cover trauma.”
“Let’s not get into that, okay?” Young says.
“Do you have a time of death?” I ask.
“Let’s not get into that either.”
Shorter version: I’m a suspect.
I’m not sure why. Surely, if I had done this deed, I would have taken the painting with me. Or perhaps not. Perhaps I was clever enough to have murdered him and left the painting so it would be found and returned to my family.