Masterpiece Page 16

  Even Marvin felt confused at this point, and he could tell from their faces that Karl and Christina were thoroughly baffled. The story was sounding more implausible the longer James talked.

  “Anyway,” James continued lamely, looking at the floor, “it was like a mailing label. It seemed important. But I figured you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Dad, so that’s why I left without saying anything.” He took a deep breath and plunged into the rest of the tale.

  “And then I found Fortitude in that apartment. I tried to call you, Dad, but your cell phone wasn’t working. So I had to call here, and Denny answered the phone. It was, I don’t know, about an hour ago. I said where I was, and I told Denny about the drawing. And he . . . he said he’d tell you and you’d all come right away.”

  James stopped, raising his eyes slowly to their faces. “But he didn’t tell you, did he? I think he didn’t tell you because he stole the drawings. They were in that Gordon Perry guy’s apartment. In Denny’s briefcase.”

  “James,” Karl said. His voice was sterner than Marvin had ever heard it. “That’s a terrible accusation to make.”

  “I know, Dad, but—”

  Karl shook his head. “Denny’s been my friend for years. I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

  James stared miserably at the briefcase. “Look, it has the sign for the Getty museum on it . . . and Denny’s initials,” he mumbled, gesturing.

  Christina was still kneeling next to him, but her gaze shifted back to the briefcase, then to the drawings. She was silent for a long time.

  “Denny helped with the entire theft,” she said finally. “He knew every detail of the arrangements we’d made . . . the timing, where the microchip would be hidden, the name of the undercover FBI agent.”

  Karl stared at her. “So? You knew those things too.”

  Christina shook her head slightly, as if she was trying to puzzle out something.

  “It’s Denny we’re talking about!” Karl protested.

  “Yes,” Christina said. She stood. “He was with me the night I switched the drawings. We were the only two in the museum at that hour, besides the security staff.”

  “Right,” Karl said. “But that doesn’t make him a thief.”

  “When we made the exchange, I brought the real Dürer here to my office. Denny was with me. I wrapped it up, and . . . oh, I don’t know, how can it be? It’s Denny, he couldn’t have done this.”

  “No! He’s not a thief.”

  “But listen to me,” Christina said pensively. “He was with me, but we were also, I don’t know, apart at different times. He could have changed the wrapping. He was the one who hung James’s drawing down in the gallery while I took the real Dürer, or what I thought was the real Dürer, up to the fifth floor, to the vault in the director’s office.”

  “Christina—” Karl interrupted.

  “I know, I know. It’s so hard to believe.” She lapsed into silence again, staring at the drawings. “Karl . . . today, when I told him Fortitude was gone . . . there was something wrong with the way he reacted. He was upset, certainly, but he seemed almost more concerned about me. And I kept thinking, ‘This is so strange, one of the Getty’s prized artworks may be lost forever, and he’s telling me how sorry he is.’ ”

  “Well, of course, he was sorry,” Karl exclaimed. “He loves Dürer’s work, and he knows you do too.”

  “Yes,” Christina said. She sighed. “This is his briefcase, I’m sure of it. Look—‘D.E.M.,’ and the Getty logo.” She lifted her phone. “I think we need to talk to Denny himself.”

  James watched her anxiously, and Marvin poked his head farther out, wanting to hear what Denny would possibly say.

  Christina pursed her lips. “He’s not picking up his cell.” After a minute, she said, “Denny, hi, it’s Christina. Please call me as soon as you get this message. It’s important.” She turned to Karl. “Let’s try the apartment,” she said, dialing again.

  Karl and James stood tensely, waiting. After a minute, she shook her head. “He’s not answering there either.”

  Christina set down the phone, her eyes settling on Fortitude. “I was so busy all day yesterday, talking to the FBI, going over everything. I wasn’t even in the museum for most of it. Of course, I didn’t think I needed to double-check the drawing. We’d been so careful in my office. And I trusted him! Completely. I even asked him a couple of times to make sure everything looked all right, and he said it did.”

  Karl shook his head. “I don’t believe it. Denny . . . he’s a good man. He’s as devoted to Dürer as you are.”

  Christina nodded. “More so.”

  “Then why? Why gamble his entire career, not to mention a prison sentence?”

  “Will he go to jail?” James interrupted, his eyes wide.

  Maybe he deserves to go to jail, Marvin thought.

  But Karl didn’t answer, still focused on Christina. “As a practical matter, where would he even get the money to buy one of these?”

  Christina hesitated. “Well, Denny comes from money. And who knows? Maybe he’s the front man for someone else.”

  Marvin thought back to the apartment, to Denny’s conversation with the woman with the funny-sounding name. Something about being picked up at an airport.

  “On the black market,” Christina continued, “the drawings would cost considerably less than their real value. Dürer is not nearly as well known as the bigger names of the Renaissance, and these can’t be resold anywhere legitimate.”

  Karl paced the room, while James watched them both with huge eyes. “But it just doesn’t make sense. Fortitude was at the Getty already. Why not steal it from there? Why wait till it was all the way across the country?”

  “That’s the part that does make sense,” Christina said slowly. “He was much less likely to get caught here. The drawing was on loan to the Met, we were the ones responsible. Oh, my God!” She covered her mouth. “Justice! Denny was here in New York when it was stolen. He was at a conference. He came to the Met all the time that week. He had full access to the departments. I made sure of that.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t have made this easier for him if I’d tried.”

  “You think he stole all of the drawings?” Karl asked, stunned.

  “I don’t know,” Christina said soberly. “Maybe he hired people to take the first two.” She rested her hand weakly next to Fortitude. “With this one, I might as well have presented it to him gift-wrapped.”

  James looked from one to the other, and Marvin could see that his pale face was pinched and tired. It had been a long day. “But you said he couldn’t sell them, right?” he asked. “And he couldn’t show them to anybody or tell anybody he had them, because the police would be looking for them. So why did he do this?”

  Christina’s eyes traced the four tiny images. “Maybe he just wanted them together . . . for himself.”

  Marvin remembered Denny in the dark study, looking at the drawings with tears in his eyes.

  “So what now?” Karl asked Christina. “Are you going to call the FBI?”

  “If this is true . . .” Christina winced. “Can you imagine tomorrow’s headlines?” It’ll be awful for him. And for the two museums. For everyone.”

  “But will he go to jail?” James asked again.

  Karl and Christina were silent. After a minute, Karl said, “Look at the expression on Justice’s face,” he said. “This is why she looks so sad.”

  James glanced up at his father, and Karl explained, “Because the right thing to do can be so awful sometimes.”

  There seemed nothing more to say. Marvin crouched beneath James’s collar, his heart heavy.

  Karl ran his fingers through his hair. “We should call the FBI. Tell them about the drawings.” He looked at James. “I still don’t understand how you found these, James. How’d you even get into the apartment by yourself? How did you know they’d be there?”

  James squirmed awkwardly, avoiding his father’s eyes. “It’s like I said,
I found that address and I just knew,” he answered softly. “And then when I got there, I used a paper clip to—”

  “What?” Karl’s mouth dropped open. “You picked the lock?”

  “Sort of,” James said. Quickly, he turned to Christina, and Marvin knew he was trying to change the subject. “Why can’t you just give the drawings back? That’s the important thing, anyway. Why do you have to tell the police about Denny?”

  Christina touched his hair gently. “It’s a crime, James. Think of Dürer’s virtues . . . Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude, Justice. Above all, Justice. Don’t you think we have a duty to honor those ideals?”

  James looked worriedly at Karl. “But those aren’t the only good things. What about sticking up for somebody? Isn’t that important too? Denny’s your friend.”

  But he did a bad thing, Marvin wanted to protest. He couldn’t forget the surge of anger he’d felt listening to Denny’s side of the phone conversation when Christina told him the real drawing had been stolen. Denny had lied to her. He’d manipulated all of them.

  But then Marvin remembered that James didn’t know that. James thought of him only as the kindly, rumpled man who loved Dürer’s drawings.

  Christina turned to Karl. “The Greeks said the four virtues contained all the rest, remember?”

  Karl shook his head. “But they don’t. Denny’s a good friend. I can’t believe he did this, but if it happened . . . what about compassion? What about forgiveness?”

  Marvin inched forward again to look at the four miniatures. In their crisp, certain strokes, none of these drawings seemed to capture forgiveness. The images had to do with strength and self-control: the girl fighting the lion, the girl measuring wine, the girl refusing the winged suitor, the girl wielding the sword. Forgiveness was softer and more generous; it was something you offered to another person, rather than something you demanded of yourself.

  Christina looked at him for a moment, then said again gently: “It’s a crime. And it’s not up to us.” She picked up the phone. “Who knows? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s an explanation we haven’t thought of. But we have to tell the FBI and let them take it from here.”

  As she dialed, she whispered, “Isn’t it amazing to see the Virtues together like this, just as Dürer intended?”

  Marvin studied each drawing, resplendent in its detail. So much human fuss over something so small. It was somehow heartening to him.

  Karl pulled James close to him, squeezing his shoulder. “The FBI will want to talk to you, buddy. But for now, let’s go home. Picking locks, finding stolen masterpieces . . . I’d say your work here is done.”

  Home, Marvin thought. He was immediately overcome with longing for Mama and Papa, for his cotton-ball bed and his smothering, overinvolved relatives—even for Elaine. He couldn’t wait to be back where he belonged.

  Safe Returns

  Marvin’s homecoming was a dramatic affair, full of exclamations and recriminations, joyous embraces and stern I-told-you-so’s. When James finally lowered him to the bottom of the dark cupboard and he crawled through the plaster wall into his own living room, he was instantly subsumed in a throng of anxious kinfolk, who extended dozens of legs to pat his shell and chuck him under the chin.

  “Marvin!” Mama and Papa cried simultaneously, rushing over to him. They couldn’t stop hugging him, clearly overcome with guilt at having actually given permission for this last, most dangerous outing.

  “My boy, we thought you were done for!” Uncle Albert boomed. “This business of leaving home to help the humans has gone entirely too far.”

  “Indeed it has,” chimed in Marvin’s grandmother. “Have you learned nothing from the experiences of your elders, dear boy? You must stop dabbling in human affairs! No good will come of it.”

  Elaine’s eyes were huge. “Oh, Marvin, you don’t know how scared we’ve all been!” she cried. “Why, I just knew the most terrible thing had happened to you. When I heard you’d gone back to the museum again, I said, ‘He’ll end up drowned in that bottle of ink—’ ”

  “Now, Elaine,” Aunt Edith interrupted.

  Marvin thought of Elaine in the turtle tank and muttered under his breath, “You know what a good swimmer I am.”

  But mostly he accepted their concerned scolding without complaint. He was beginning to understand that some of the most irritating things his family did stemmed from the depth of their love. And suddenly it felt wonderful to be worried about and fussed over, to be reclaimed by their messy closeness. Marvin remembered his lonely journey with Fortitude, when he thought that he might never see Mama and Papa and the relatives again. He realized that this was exactly what he had pined for—the thick web of affection that bound them all together. In some fundamental way, whatever terrible or wonderful thing happened to him always seemed to have happened to them, as well.

  And so it was that Marvin was obliged to spend the evening telling all about his adventures, every exciting and horrifying detail: about the burglary, the dark trip through the city with Fortitude, the discovery of the three other Virtue drawings, the shocking revelation that Denny himself had masterminded the heists.

  In between the myriad questions and discussions this prompted, Mama and Aunt Edith kept replenishing the table with platters of food—potato peelings, flakes of tuna fish, an orange rind, and crumbs of toast spread with a truly delicious rhubarb jelly—so that by midnight, everyone was well-stuffed and ready for a nap.

  “You need to rest, Marvin,” Mama said decisively. “All this excitement is too much for you.”

  “I am pretty tired,” Marvin admitted.

  Elaine followed him into his room. “You’re so lucky,” she told him, careful to lower her voice so that the grown-ups wouldn’t hear.

  Marvin nodded. “I know. I thought I might never be back here again.”

  “I don’t mean that,” she said dismissively. “I mean lucky you got out of the apartment again. You’ve gotten to see the world!”

  Marvin thought about that. He had seen the world. It had been scary at times, but also exhilarating. Who could have imagined it would be such a complicated, interesting place? Elaine was right—he was lucky. When you saw different parts of the world, you saw different parts of yourself. And when you stayed home, where it was safe, those parts of yourself also stayed hidden.

  It wasn’t until late the next day that Marvin had a chance to visit James again. He made his way to James’s bedroom and found him hunched over his desk, drawing with his ink set. The pictures looked nothing like Marvin’s. The strokes were fat and unsteady. The things he drew had an abstract, disjointed look: an angular, foreshortened chair; the thick, pronged branches of the tree outside the window. James was concentrating so hard, he didn’t see Marvin crawl to the edge of the paper and stand there, watching. When the boy finally noticed him, he gasped in delight and sheepishly set down his pen.

  “Hey!” he said. “Little guy! I never know when you’re going to show up. We have to figure out a way to reach each other, you know? Like if I have a special message for you, maybe I can leave something in the cupboard so you know to come here. Or if you really need me, you can do the same thing.” He thought for a minute. “Something small . . . I know!”

  He tore off a corner of the paper he was drawing on and made an ink X on it. “We’ll put this in the kitchen cupboard behind the wastebasket, right by your house. We’ll leave it facedown unless one of us needs the other, then we’ll turn it over. And if it’s turned over, we’ll meet here at my desk in the afternoon. Okay? Let’s say four o’clock, because I’m always home from school by then.”

  James nodded emphatically, pleased with himself. Marvin smiled up at him. They might not be able to talk to each other, but there were so many other ways to say what they meant.

  James pointed at his picture. “Look what I’m making. I’ll never be as good as you are . . . but I like it. It’s fun.” He lowered his finger and Marvin climbed onto it.

  “And guess what. I
have so much to tell you. I had to go to the police station! There was a jail and everything! And I talked to the FBI.” His face clouded momentarily. “I don’t think they believed me, exactly, when I said how I found the drawings. But Christina kind of took over and told them about Denny, and then they let me come home.”

  James leaned closer to Marvin, lowering his voice. “The FBI can’t find Denny anywhere. When they got to the apartment, he’d cleaned out all his stuff. He may have left the country! They think he went to Germany. Christina keeps calling his cell phone, and he doesn’t answer.” James sighed. “I know what he did was wrong and everything, but I still kind of hope he doesn’t get caught.”

  Then he laughed suddenly. “But guess what. The drawings are all over the news. They’re not saying how they were found, but they’ve had all these experts look at them already, and it’s such a big deal. Everyone on TV is so excited. They had an interview with one of the German guys from that museum where the other two were stolen, and he kept saying something like ‘Wunderbar! Wunderbar!’ My dad says that means ‘wonderful.’ ”

  Marvin thought that it must be a dream come true for the museum people, to have all four of Dürer’s long-lost Virtues returned in one fell swoop.

  James lifted Marvin close to his face, grinning at him. “And it’s all because of us! Well, you, mostly. But I helped. And Christina says they’ve gotten permission to put all of the drawings in some special exhibit, before they have to send them back. So they hung them this morning, and Dad just called and he says the lines for the museum are around the block. We’re going to go, all of us, this afternoon! Isn’t that great?”

  James let out a long breath. “So you have to come, too, of course. You’re like a real, live hero!” He set Marvin down, looking at him proudly. “Nobody will ever know. But you are.”