Steal, page 2
“Professor Reinhart?”
I’m not sure which student had spoken up. It was a safe bet there was more than one. I had no idea how long I’d been standing there behind the lectern in a complete daze. “I’m sorry. What?” I asked.
“You stopped talking,” said someone in the front row.
“Yeah, are you sure you’re okay?” came a voice toward the back.
I snapped out of it. The room, my students—and most important—my purpose suddenly came into focus.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Everybody follow me.”
CHAPTER 2
The Yale professor handbook is decidedly unclear on the topic of spontaneous field trips. Come to think of it, it’s decidedly unclear whether there’s even such a thing as the Yale professor handbook. If so, I certainly haven’t read it.
Besides, it’s not as if I were taking the class rock climbing or bungee jumping. We were merely heading over to Woolsey Rotunda, which serves as the entrance to Woolsey Hall, the largest auditorium on campus. Even as we trudged in from the cold, though, none of my students knew why we were there. That’s how I wanted it.
“Everyone, please spread out,” I said.
There’s a reason the Whiffenpoofs and practically every other a cappella singing group at Yale has performed in Woolsey Rotunda. In a word? Acoustics. Nowhere else on campus does sound carry, echo, reverberate, and resonate as fully and beautifully as it has in this rotunda for more than a century.
I waited in the middle as the students filled out the space around me. Then I began.
“When I was thirteen, I lost my mother to pancreatic cancer,” I said. “There’s no good time to lose a parent, but thirteen was especially tricky. I was obviously old enough to fully understand what had happened, the finality of it. But at the same time I was still only a kid. I hadn’t lived enough to really know how to process death. All I knew was how much it hurt, and here’s the tricky part: all I wanted to do was make that pain go away.
“I remember two things about the guy on the other end of the phone the night I called the suicide hotline. The first was his name—Doug. Doug talked to me for more than an hour, and at no time did he ever tell me that I shouldn’t kill myself. Everyone who calls that number has reasons for doing so, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, the main reason isn’t that you want to kill yourself. It’s that you’re searching for someone, anyone, to give you a reason not to. And simply being told ‘don’t do it’ isn’t reason enough.
“So that was the second thing. Doug never told me that night what I should or shouldn’t do. His job wasn’t to give me a lecture, which is why we’re here instead of back in class. What suddenly dawned on me while looking at all of you, so soon after Carter’s suicide, is that words just aren’t going to cut it today. How can you make sense of something that makes no sense? You can’t. You shouldn’t. So today, I say to hell with saying the right thing. To hell with saying anything at all.”
With that, I gave my class a resounding explanation for why we’d marched across campus. Acoustics. At the top of my lungs, I let go with the loudest, nastiest, most primal scream I’d ever unleashed.
Half of my students were startled. As for the other half, I downright scared the crap out of them. But an amazing and wonderful thing happened as the sound of my scream engulfed the entire rotunda, the echoes seemingly weaving in and out and all around us.
One by one they started to join in. Primal screams from younger lungs, even louder and—yes, angrier—than mine. The angrier the better. Let it all out. That was the idea. Then it can’t eat you up from the inside.
When the echoes finally faded, the rotunda once again returning to silence, I looked around and smiled. Satisfied.
“Class dismissed,” I said. “See you all next week.”
CHAPTER 3
T. S. Eliot had it all wrong about April. Cruel, my ass. Clearly the dude had never tried riding a motorcycle round trip from Manhattan to New Haven in the month of January. Or February, for that matter.
The deepest into winter I can usually still ride my bike is December, and that’s only if I catch a week early on before the mercury truly plummets. Even then I have to layer up like the kid from A Christmas Story.
“Is that a ’62 or a ’63?” came a voice over my shoulder. I was standing in the parking lot near Ingalls Rink, affectionately known as the Whale, about to strap on my helmet after climbing into my insulated clutch pants.
“Actually, it’s a ’61,” I said, before fully turning around to see who was doing the asking.
Not that looking at him told me much. The man standing before me was wearing a black full-length cashmere coat and a Vineyard Vines baseball cap pulled down tight just above the eyes, which were covered by oversized sunglasses. Whoever he was, he was lying low.
“A 1961 Triumph TR6,” he said. “I don’t actually own one of those. Good for you.”
There was so much to unpack with that line I didn’t know where to begin. I don’t actually own one of those? And that condescending tack-on in light of the fact that I did? Good for you? As if the natural order of the universe had somehow been upended by my owning something that this guy didn’t?
Only that’s what tipped me off as to who he was, the connotation of immense wealth combined with the strong sense that I’d heard his voice somewhere before. This was Carter von Oehson’s father, in the flesh. He wasn’t talking to the press in the wake of Carter’s suicide, but they’d shown news clips of past interviews.
He stepped toward me. “I’m Mathias von Oehson,” he said, making it official.
I removed my riding gloves so we could shake hands. “Dylan Reinhart,” I said.
“Yes, I know.”
I know you know. This is hardly an accidental meeting, is it? Not a chance in the world.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” I said.
“Thank you. I appreciate that. Actually, that’s what brings me to campus, albeit incognito,” he said. “I was hoping you and I could speak privately for a few minutes.”
I glanced around. There wasn’t another human being within a hundred yards. Far be it from me to point that out, though. Not to Mathias von Oehson. He was the genius, the Nostradamus, the Mad Hungarian of Wall Street, according to the litany of articles and features extolling his mastery of the financial markets. The man was the titan of all hedge funds. In other words, Mathias von Oehson didn’t just manage risk. He controlled it.
“Shall we head back to my office?” I asked.
No need. Von Oehson quickly signaled with his hand. All the privacy we could ever want came rolling up to us from behind a row of parked cars. A black stretch limousine.
Except this was no ordinary prom-night limo. This was a Mercedes-Maybach Pullman, the ultimate ride for the chauffeured set. I’d never seen one in person. In fact, I could’ve sworn I’d read they weren’t even available for sale in the United States. A brilliant US marketing strategy, if there ever was one.
The driver stepped out, but his boss waved him off. Von Oehson opened the door for me, then walked around to get in from the other side. And like that we were sitting side by side in roughly seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth of comfort. So why don’t I feel the least bit comfortable?
The reason was as clear as the stress and anguish etched on von Oehson’s face, even behind the cap and sunglasses. He was about to ask me a question that I couldn’t answer. He was a father on a mission. It was only natural. Carter’s suicide post on Instagram was short on specifics. Very short. Von Oehson was now talking to anyone and everyone on the Yale campus who could possibly help him understand why his son would take his own life. Friends and acquaintances, professors and administrators. I was simply next on his list.
Or maybe not.
Von Oehson turned to me, removed his sunglasses, and got right down to it. “My son didn’t kill himself,” he said.
CHAPTER 4
“Carter’s alive?”
“I don’t know for certain. I think so,” said von Oehson. “But if he is dead, he sure as hell didn’t drown himself out at sea.”
“You’re saying he could’ve been murdered?”
“That or, more likely, he was kidnapped. That’s what I really think. Either way, they’ve made it look like a suicide.”
I drew a deep breath, in and out. It takes a lot to make my head spin, and I was already full-on, Tilt-a-Whirl dizzy. According to von Oehson, his son might be alive. Or maybe he was murdered. Or quite possibly kidnapped. And somehow his suicide was faked?
“Have you gone to the police?” I asked.
“No,” said von Oehson.
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t.”
There was obviously a reason behind that answer, but even more obvious was that von Oehson didn’t want to share it. Not yet, at least. He seemingly had this conversation all mapped out in his head, and we weren’t quite at the point where he would explain why he couldn’t go to the police.
Fine, I’ll play along for now.
“I could ask you a ton of questions about what you know and how you know it,” I said. “Instead, why don’t you simply share what you’re comfortable telling me?”
Von Oehson nodded. It was the way he nodded, though. More approval than agreement. It was my first inkling as to why he’d come looking for me.
“Peachy keen,” he said, punching both words. “Does that ring a bell?”
“Yes, from Carter’s Instagram post. He used that expression.”
“Yes, and very much on purpose. Peachy keen happens to be the distress signal for our home alarm system in Darien.”
“By distress signal, you mean if someone triggered the alarm while breaking into your home and then put a gun to your head.”
“Exactly,” said von Oehson. “That’s how you would signal the alarm company when they called the house: use a code word or phrase that doesn’t tip off the intruder.”
“Carter knew the hidden meaning of the phrase?” I asked. “Peachy keen?”
“I’m the one who told him.”
“Years ago, I assume. Right?”
“Yes, but it’s not like he’d forget.”
“So in other words, Carter wrote the Instagram post under duress,” I said. “He was signaling you. Is that what you’re saying?”
“You don’t seem convinced.”
“I’m simply weighing the possibility that it was a coincidence. Perhaps Carter just happened to have used that expression.”
“It wasn’t a coincidence.”
“I’m sure you want to believe that, but—”
He cut me off, his hand slicing hard through the air. “This isn’t about what I want to believe. This is what happened.”
I looked away from von Oehson, my eyes darting around at all the fancy knobs, dials, buttons, screens, and hand-stitched leather surrounding me in the back of his Maybach. I said nothing. Not another word.
Sometimes you have to let your silence do the talking for you.
I’m done playing along, Mathias. Whether you’re ready or not, it’s time to tell me. Why can’t you go to the police?
Everything he’d told me so far about Carter’s disappearance kept coming back to that one question. I knew it, and so did he.
“Okay, it’s like this,” said von Oehson finally. “There’s something else missing besides my son.”
That was more than enough to get me looking back at him again.
“It’s a painting,” he continued. “A Monet worth more than a hundred million dollars. It was at my home in Darien. Now it isn’t.”
“Wouldn’t that be even more of a reason for you to go to the police?”
“It would be if it weren’t for one thing.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a stolen painting,” he said.
CHAPTER 5
“I really wish you hadn’t told me that.”
“It’s not quite what you think,” he said.
“What do I think?”
“That I stole a hundred-million-dollar Monet.”
“So you didn’t?”
Von Oehson shrugged. “Technically, I did. Although I was more like a silent partner.”
“Again, you should’ve stayed that way,” I said. “Silent.”
“You don’t strike me as the type, Professor Reinhart.”
“What type is that?”
“Someone uncomfortable knowing another man’s secrets,” he said. “Besides, I haven’t even told you why I stole it yet. Like any great work of art, there’s more than meets the eye.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
Right on cue, von Oehson pressed one of the buttons on the center console between us. An image of the Monet came up on a monitor below the raised partition that sealed off the driver.
That’s another thing about any great work of art. You usually know the artist just by looking at it.
“Woman by the Seine,” he said. “1866. Unsigned, but it hung in Monet’s studio in Giverny before he sold it. There’s a photograph to prove it.”
I leaned forward, taking a closer look at the stunning image of a woman in a white crinoline domed skirt. She was shielding the sun with a parasol—a Monet staple—near a bench along the Seine river in Paris. At least, one could assume it was the Seine.
“Beautiful,” I said. It truly was. “I’ve never seen this one before.”
“Most people haven’t. For more than half a century it was hanging in a private room in the Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest.”
“So it was owned by the Hungarian government?”
“Funny you should ask,” he said. “They certainly claim it was.”
“You know differently?”
“I do. And they do, too. They’ll just never admit it publicly.”
“Is that why I’ve never heard about this? The theft of a hundred-million-dollar Monet would certainly make a newspaper or two,” I said.
“Yes, to put it mildly. Part of the reason was surely embarrassment, but the main reason they kept it under wraps was to avoid the unwanted scrutiny it would’ve attracted. How the painting was originally obtained.”
“Let me guess.” Although by this point it was hardly a guess. The combination of the Hungarian government and the sketchy lineage of a painting in their possession—even the most casual student of World War II history could probably put it together. “Nazis,” I said.
“Yes,” said von Oehson. “The painting was looted by the Third Reich during the occupation of Hungary in 1944. After the war it quietly ended up in the hands of the Hungarian government.”
“Only it was never theirs to own in the first place.”
“Precisely,” said von Oehson.
“How do you know, though?”
“Because it belonged to my great-grandfather. He bought it, and it was taken from him.”
“So you reclaimed it,” I said. “Only now it’s disappeared along with your son.”
“That’s why I think Carter’s still alive. It’s not enough that they got the painting back. I’m being punished. Taxed. I suspect soon I’ll be contacted about a ransom. And that’s if I’m lucky.”
“You really think the Hungarian government is behind this?”
“My art collection is valued at well over a billion dollars, and the only painting taken is the one that no one knows I have?”
“If you’re right, someone must have known.”
“Which is why we’re having this conversation,” he said. “I need you to find whoever that someone is, and when you do you’ll also find my son.”
There it was. Confirmation of what I suspected. Mathias von Oehson was looking for a hired gun. He couldn’t go to the police lest he admit to grand larceny of the highest order. I was plan B.
Still. “I’m a college professor, Mr. von Oehson.”
He smiled ever so slightly. “You weren’t always,” he said. “Let’s just say you come highly recommended.”
“By whom?”
“You don’t expect me to reveal all my secrets, do you? What matters is that I need your help, and I’m willing to pay handsomely for it.” He extended his hand. “What do you say?”
Sometimes you think long and hard about a decision. You ponder it deeply, carefully weighing the pros and cons. This wasn’t one of those times. There were too many cons.
“If you truly feel you can’t go to the police, there are certain private detectives, most of them ex–FBI agents, who you could turn to,” I said, shaking his hand. “As for me, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“You haven’t even heard my offer.”
“It wouldn’t make a difference.”
“Are you sure? Most everyone likes my offers.”
“I’m not everyone,” I said.
Von Oehson laughed. A little too hard, though, and he knew it.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You reminded me of myself just there, back when I quit my first job at Goldman. I told them I was leaving that same day. I wasn’t giving them two weeks. They said, ‘Everyone gives two weeks,’ and my response was, ‘I’m not everyone.’” He bobbed his head, thinking about it. “They were right, though. I should have given them two weeks’ notice. It’s the right thing to do.”
As I reached for the door handle and stepped out of the car, I said nothing more. Neither did von Oehson.
That should’ve been my first clue.
CHAPTER 6
It was midafternoon when I arrived back in Manhattan. Five o’clock, cocktail hour, was still a couple of hours away, but it didn’t matter. I was rounding up. After the primal-scream field trip with my students, followed by the encounter with Mathias von Oehson that flipped everything about Carter’s apparent suicide upside down, it was definitely time for a drink.
Turns out, Tracy was well ahead of me.
