Hanging the Devil, page 15
“Go back to Freddie,” said the ghost, “and tell him to check in with Hong Kong on my delivery. If he ignores the time difference, we’ll only lose a day.”
Gerry nodded. “You want the lantern?”
The ghost smiled and shook his head. “I won’t need it.” He ascended the ladder effortlessly, as if his feet had never touched the ground. He blended with the shadows until the faint shower of light from the drain fell upon him. His long hair glowed like an eldritch halo.
Gerry turned and ran down the tunnel as if he’d seen a ghost, which he had.
The ghost ignored him as he pushed open the drain and climbed into the light.
32
The light was sallow, and the air was damp at the impound lot on Seventh Avenue.
A miasma of morning fog and car exhaust drifted from the Route 80 overpass down to the impounded cars. Cape walked back to his car and popped the trunk, grabbed a sweatshirt and a light jacket, then returned and offered both to Maria.
“You pick.”
“Always a gentleman.” Maria took the jacket.
“San Francisco weather.” Cape pulled the sweatshirt over his head. “As welcoming as a cold slap in the face.”
Maria held the jacket up to her nose. “How long has this been in your trunk?”
“What year is it?”
Maria smiled and pulled the garment around her shoulders.
Beau stepped out of the corrugated shack that served as the office and gave a parting wave to the officer inside. He crossed the lot, pointing over Cape’s shoulder at another building toward the back. Beyond the ragged rows of cars confiscated by the SFPD was a larger structure with twin double-wide garage doors flanking a standard door that you’d see on a house. Beau jangled a set of keys as they wound their way past cars that had been towed or stolen and recovered. The cars looked lonely waiting for their rightful owners to drive them home.
Cape recalled a visit he’d made last year, after his car vanished from its spot at a dead meter. A budget shortfall was reason enough for the city to tow any vehicle left unattended, and Cape’s glove compartment full of unpaid tickets made it quite a catch. It took a couple of days to figure out how to disable the security cameras long enough to steal his car back at four in the morning.
“Why bring the helicopter here?” asked Cape. “And not the airfield?”
“Forensics hasn’t had a good look,” said Beau. “The airfield is too far south of the city.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Hall of Justice is two blocks away, a short walk for anyone working the case.”
Beau selected a key from the ring and unlocked the main entrance to the makeshift warehouse. Inside were more cars, interspersed with other vehicles—ATVs, motorcycles, even a golf cart. The closest car caught Cape’s attention, and he checked the insignia, then noticed the grill of the car on its left. His gaze moved laterally, cataloging the street value of the row.
“You’ve got a Bugatti, a BMW i8, a McLaren…”
“Welcome to the Fast & Furious showroom,” said Beau. “All vehicles inside this shed are either part of an active investigation, or they’re stupid expensive—or both.” He rubbed his thumb against his fingers as if waving cash. “Cars like this on the open lot, that’s too big a temptation behind nothing more than a chain-link fence. Last year some numbskull stole a car in the middle of the night, right off the lot, and that was just a piece of shit convertible.”
“Shocking,” said Cape.
“Imagine if these gems were on display,” said Beau. “City would have to pay for a night guard…easier to build this shed.”
They cut through the next row, and Beau pointed them toward the left rear corner of the room. A plastic tarp was taped to the floor, on top of which sat a jigsaw of scorched metal. The helicopter looked like an unfinished erector set abandoned by an impatient child.
The curve of the shattered cockpit and a bent rotor blade were suggestive of a helicopter, but other pieces were ragged strips of aluminum that might have been dumped from the back of a truck headed to the scrap heap. The tail was bent in places but surprisingly intact, the registration number still legible if you followed the numbers along the crooked contours.
Up close, the helicopter was much larger than Cape expected. Jutting from the side of the museum, its scale relative to the building had made it look like a standard helicopter, the type used by police or news channels to monitor traffic. This was much longer and broader in the belly, the extended cockpit wide enough to hold four men abreast, with plenty of room between.
As if reading his mind, Maria said, “This could carry a dozen men, counting the pilot.” She studied the tail. “It’s a Sikorsky, isn’t it?”
“Yup,” said Beau. “Sikorsky Blackhawk from the Coast Guard station at the airport.”
“Stolen?” asked Cape.
“Borrowed without permission, for sure,” said Beau. “Taken from a maintenance hangar the night before the robbery. Maybe they planned on returning it, or they intended to get inside the museum quickly and abandon it on the roof, or—”
“—no.” Maria knelt behind the mangled cockpit to study the charred debris. “If they hadn’t crashed, they would have needed to carry everything.” Lying on her stomach, Maria took a pen from her pocket and began moving caramelized fragments of wood around the tarp. “They didn’t get what they came for…” She stood and brushed the front of her pants. “…not yet.”
Cape hadn’t seen the pattern at first, but now he did. The sections of wood were part of a whole, puzzle pieces torn apart. Maria walked a few paces to her right and dropped to her knees again, then crawled to the center of the tarp. More detritus came together, speckled bands of gold and green now visible through the gray ash.
Beau grunted, impressed. “What are we looking at?”
Maria rose to her knees, opened her bag and fished around until she produced a small brush. “Okay if I—?”
“Forensics will be pissed,” said Beau. “Be my guest—you’re the one who works at the cultural heritage whatever-it-is.”
“Crime division,” said Maria.
“Art police,” said Cape.
“Está bien.” Maria pressed her face next to the first pile of debris and started brushing. She swept the brush away from her body, holding her breath on the backstroke. She worked from the edges of the fragments toward their center, exposing just enough of the surface to reveal the faint outline of an image.
A grand building, white walls offset by subtle hues of pink and blue, the tiled roof curved in the style of palaces seen in classical Chinese paintings. Rolling green hills and a small lake in the foreground. Fog wrapped delicately around the foothills, which reminded Cape of San Francisco and gave the entire scene the aspect of a fairy tale. The canvas was ruptured and covered in jagged trails of blackened paint, as if an apocalyptic storm had come down from the fairy-tale mountains to tear the world asunder.
Maria scooted backward on her stomach and stood, a triumphant grin on her face.
“What is it?” asked Cape.
“And what was it worth?” asked Beau.
“Yuanmingyuan,” said Maria softly. “Scenes from the Summer Palace.” She turned to Beau. “It would be priceless, if it were real.”
“What was that first word?” asked Cape.
“Yuan…ming…yuan,” said Maria. “It was the summer palace for Chinese emperors during the Qing Dynasty, looted and burned during the second Opium War. Your friend Sally would know the story, anyone raised in China does. This painting, it’s one of forty commissioned by the Qianlong emperor, each depicting a different view of the palace.”
“You said priceless,” said Cape.
“These paintings are the only surviving images of the palace grounds before they were destroyed,” said Maria. “So the real ones have added cultural significance.”
“You think it’s a fake,” said Beau.
“It has to be.” Maria’s eyes betrayed her excitement. She was in her element.
Cape was staring at the ruined painting, but his mind’s eye was re-watching the museum get robbed one frame at a time. “Security cameras didn’t show any paintings being moved.”
“Not one,” said Maria.
“The museum claims nothing was stolen.” Beau rubbed his face in his hands.
“I’m not sure that’s true,” said Maria.
“Me neither,” said Cape.
“But what if it is,” said Beau, “as far as these paintings are concerned.”
“If these weren’t stolen,” said Maria, “that means—”
“—they were already in the helicopter,” said Cape.
“—so the thieves were bringing art to the museum,” said Beau. “That’s a twist.”
“Which makes this a forgery.” Maria bounced up and down on her toes like a sprinter warming up before a race.
Cape wondered if she was going to do a backflip next. Maria clearly felt not only excited but vindicated. He glanced at the deep-fried wreckage and recalled how quickly she’d pieced the painting together. Even for someone with a mental catalog of art like Maria’s, that could only mean she already knew what she was looking for. The painting was too complex, the lines of the mountains too subtle. A puzzle champion with four arms couldn’t have done it faster.
“This is the painting you warned your boss at Interpol about,” said Cape.
“I got a tip,” said Maria. “These paintings are normally part of a permanent collection at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the French national library. There was an attempted robbery there last year. The entrance the burglars tried to use was closest to the gallery where these paintings are displayed.”
“They got away?” asked Beau.
“Empty-handed, but yes,” said Maria. “On our recommendation, the library upgraded their security system the week before. The thieves didn’t know.”
“Nothing on the security footage?” asked Cape, guessing the answer.
“Just static and white mist,” said Maria.
“What a coincidence,” said Beau.
“As soon as I heard that four of the paintings would be on loan to the museum here,” said Maria, “I had to come to San Francisco.”
Cape hummed the tune to ‘San Francisco, here I come’ as he paced the length of the helicopter. Something Maria had said was poking at him like a rock in his shoe. When he reached the end of the helicopter’s tail, he turned and asked, “When the museum in Norway got hit, the thieves only took a few pieces and disappeared?”
“Sí,” said Maria. “Gone in minutes.”
“Both times?”
“Every time,” said Maria. “They are working their way down a checklist, one national treasure at a time.”
“Checklist.” Cape repeated the word, weighing it against the facts. “The art committee or task force you told me about…after they traveled around the world demanding their art back—”
“—the robberies began,” said Maria. “And Interpol took an interest.”
“They hit too many museums in too short a period of time,” said Beau. “Bank robbers do the same thing, never know when to quit.”
Maria nodded. “They know Interpol has the same list. It’s only a matter of time until museums tighten up security. Then it’s back to diplomacy.”
“Which takes forever,” said Cape. “So they brought their own counterfeit art.”
“That’s good,” said Beau. “Damn good.”
“It’s brilliant,” said Maria. “If the art is still on the museum floor, how can it be stolen?”
Cape knelt and looked at the cracked flecks of paint on the charcoal panel Maria had excavated. Where the gold paint hadn’t melted, it was mottled, aged. Any sections of wood not burned revealed a rough-hewn frame, fine craftsmanship rich with imperfections that suggested another century, when power tools did not exist.
“The art you’re talking about,” said Cape. “Sculptures, paintings, bronze from hundreds of years ago—making a copy good enough to fool a museum can’t be easy.”
“For something as detailed and famous as this?” Maria considered the challenge. “It would take at least two people.”
“Two?”
“A true artist,” said Maria, “and a historian.”
33
“You are a true artist.”
“I’m just a mimic,” said Peng, setting down his brush. “And you are too kind.”
“I know something about art.” Wen smiled at the young man standing in front of him, a prodigy who barely realized his own talent. “And you’re an artist.”
Peng nodded his thanks. When he first heard a professor was going to help, Peng took offense, but only a day into their relationship, Peng wondered how he had ever painted alone. Wen’s knowledge of the materials, brushstrokes, and the history behind the painting changed how Peng approached the canvas. He could feel the image before he drew a single brushstroke. It felt like uncovering lost art rather than recreating it.
The only thing that troubled Peng about his older colleague was the man’s appearance. Wen was tall and lanky by nature but looked malnourished. His eyes were bright but sunken. Peng knew the professor once taught in Hong Kong but was beginning to wonder where Wen had been before arriving in Dafen.
“Do you want to sit?” Peng gestured at two nearby stools. “It will take a few minutes to dry before we can add the next layer.”
“My knees thank you.” Wen pulled a stool closer. “It would be ideal for each layer to dry longer, but if we adjust the thickness of the paint as we go, it should work.”
The two had been leaning over the worktable for over an hour, standing side by side while Peng added details to the painting. They were working on the second floor of the art factory in a room sequestered for this project. The supervisor was instructed to get anything they needed. They answered only to the Devil himself.
“Have you met him?” asked Wen. “Mogwai.”
“Oh, yes,” said Peng. His eyes darted to the corners of the room.
Though no cameras or microphones were visible, Wen took the hint and lowered his voice. “Perhaps we can go for a walk in the park before I must…” He hesitated, glancing at his calloused hands. “…return to my quarters.”
Peng nodded, grateful for the change in subject. “I’ve never used paints like these.” He gestured at the palette next to the canvas and the nearby mixing bowls. “Berries and copper, that’s new to me.”
“Actually, it’s very old,” said Wen. “Berries were used to make pigments, and the iron and copper content in paint was much higher. It’s important to get the mixture right if you want the painting to look authentic.”
“Will this fade?”
“That’s the idea,” said Wen. “It will age rapidly to look like the original. Animal fats and urine were used as an emulsifier. Fortunately, we won’t be needing anyone’s urine today. I would hate to piss on your painting.”
Peng laughed. “Tell me more about what I just painted.”
“Nine Continents Clear and Calm,” said Wen.
“Nine continents,” said Peng. “I thought there were only seven.”
Wen smiled. “It’s a reference to the emperor’s private residence at Yuanmingyuan, one of the lost views of the Summer Palace. Commissioned in 1744 and painted by two court artists, Shen Yuan and Tangdai.”
“I like that you know the artists’ names,” said Peng.
“Too often people remember the art but not the artist.” Wen spread his hands. “You can’t have one without the other.”
“Have you always been interested in art?”
“I taught art history at university,” said Wen. “I even met my second wife at a museum.”
“Is she also—”
“—no,” said Wen. “She worked for the city government but would visit the museum during her lunch break. It was free and a nice place for a walk. We continued to meet there for walks after we started dating.”
“Some believe all art is political.” Peng glanced at the painting. “I only see beauty.”
“I could have used you on my side of the debate, during those walks with my wife.”
Peng thought of his girlfriend, Yan, working on the factory floor. He thought about their last kiss and remembered they were supposed to go out for dinner. “Your wife, where is—”
“—dead,” said Wen, more abruptly than he intended. He lowered his eyes. “I think she’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.” Peng studied his companion and saw exhaustion in the lines of his shoulders but iron in his jaw. He could only guess what Wen had been through, and Peng wondered if he would be as stoic if their roles were reversed. “What was your wife’s name?”
Wen blinked at the question, disarmed by the young boy’s sincerity. Other than his friend Bohai, no one had taken any interest since he’d been arrested. He briefly wondered what Bohai was doing and hoped his mischievous friend was safe.
“Her name was Chu Hua,” said Wen. “Though her name meant chrysanthemum, she always smelled like jasmine. She loved a perfume I couldn’t afford.” He made a bittersweet smile. “The truth is, our marriage wasn’t going very well. Hong Kong was changing, not for the better. She worked for the local government and wouldn’t hear of it when I suggested we do something. I was an idealist, and she was a realist. We argued a lot.” Wen’s expression turned rueful. “I met her right after my first wife died, maybe it was too soon. Now I’ll never know if we could have worked it out.”
Peng didn’t know what to say. He never had a real girlfriend until recently, let alone a wife. The two men were silent for a minute until Wen sighed loudly, as if expelling as much sadness as he could in one breath.
Peng asked, “Should we start mixing the next batch of paints?”
Wen took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes.” He stood and stepped over to the table, put a hand on Peng’s shoulder. “Thank you.” He gestured at a row of plastic containers. “Hand me the chalk and the linseed oil.”
“Why do you think we’re recreating this particular painting?” Peng grabbed the ingredients and made room on the table a safe distance from the canvas. He moved a mortar and pestle closer to where they were standing. “And why the crazy schedule?”
