“The more I thought about what you described, your suspect running a gallery, the more I wondered if someone had tried to re-create an actual work of art. My first thought was Hieronymus Bosch or someone like him but I came up empty. So I keyederotic artalong with the basic victim descriptions.Black manyoung man old woman.I wasn’t sure how to characterize the mentally challenged guy but finally I said to heck with political correctness and put infool.Because that’s how I saw a cruel murderer viewing him. To my amazement, this came up right away on a website called youdidntinventsexstupid.com. There’s all sorts of racy stuff on it. Apparently, Rembrandt went for outdoor sex, did a bunch of etchings, the most famous isThe Monk in the Cornfield. Then there’s Picasso, Egon Schiele, Japanese woodcuts. But also this.”
“Who runs the site?”
“A woman named Suzanne Hirto. Art history professor at Swarthmore, she directed it to ‘the smug, entitled brats who invade my classroom.’ ”
I said, “Not a great career move.”
“You’ve got that right, she was fired. Not for erotica, for hurting the poor dears’ feelings. But she keeps the site up, message of defiance and all that. Anyway, here it is:The Museum of Desire,painted sometime around 1510, probably in Venice by one Antonio Domenico Carascelli. He was rumored to be a student of Titian but that can’t be proved. This is the only known work attributed to him and even that’s up for grabs. But putting aside taste issues, he was good, don’t you think? So maybe.”
I stared at the image. “How long did you work on this?”
“You know,” she said. “You get caught up.”
“Where’s the painting now?”
“No one knows. I emailed Hirto—she’s retired, sculpts and paints. She answered right away, said she got the image from a catalog put out by a Holocaust survivor group back in the seventies.”
“Nazi art?”
“Yes, but not what you’d think. This wasn’t stolen from Jewish collectors, it was part of Hermann Göring’s personal collection. Most of whichwasplunder. Great stuff—Velázquez, Renoir, Monet, all stolen. Like a good Nazi, he left handwritten lists that finally got cataloged a few years ago. But the bastard also bought and hoarded erotica that he didn’t record. This may have been an exception because of the Titian link, but no one knows for sure. The survivors tried to get compensation for reparations but they were poorly funded, relinquished control to a larger group who’sstillstruggling to get the stolen stuff back. So no interest in a dirty picture by an unknown artist.”
“Unbelievable,” I said. “That you found it.”
“It turned out not to be that complicated, hon.”
“That’s like saying all a drag racer needs to do is drive straight.” I got up, took her face in my hands, and kissed her hard. “Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.”
“Aw,” she said. “Now I need a bigger hat.”
—
She and Blanche returned to the studio and I studied the painting, feeling queasy rather than triumphant.
I began to send the image to Milo. Decided phone-miniaturization would lessen the impact and texted instead.
How close are you?
Still at the office. Everything okay?
Fine. Come over.
Paraphrasing Robin. Why mess with brilliance?
CHAPTER
39
I filled the time waiting for him trying to find other references toThe Museum of Desire,Göring’s porn stash, Antonio Carascelli.
Nothing.
I checked out Suzanne Hirto’s site. Two headshots of her on the homepage: a photo that showed her blond, midfifties, with an open smiling face, and a self-portrait in oils that distorted her countenance to the shape of a dog bone and tinted it bilious green under a thatch of plaid hair.
The bell rang. I put the painting back on the screen and went to open the door.
Milo charged in. “What’s up?”
“A whole lot.”
