Lifeguard

Chapter 118

TWO YEARS LATER…

The ring of the phone caught me just as I was rushing out the door. I had ten-month-old Davey the Handful in my arms and was about to plop him, all twenty-two pounds, into the waiting arms of Beth, our sitter.

Ellie was already at work. She opened up a gallery. In Delray, where we settled in a quaint little bungalow a couple of blocks off the beach. She specializes in nineteenth-century French paintings and sells them in New York and up in Palm Beach. In our living room, over the mantel, we even had an Henri Gaume.

“Ned Kelly,” I answered, cradling the receiver in my neck.

I was late to work. I still took care of pools. Except this time, I bought the company, Tropic Pools, the largest in the area. These days I serviced all the fanciest ones from Boca to Palm Beach.

“Mr. Kelly,” an unfamiliar voice replied, “this is Donna Jordan Cullity. I’m a partner at Rust, Simons and Cullity. We’re a law firm in Palm Beach.”

I mouthed to Beth under my breath that Ellie would be back around 4:30. “Uh-huh,” I said into the phone receiver.

“You’re acquainted with a Mr. Sol Roth?” the lawyer inquired.

“Uh-huh,” I said again.

“Then I’m sorry to inform you that Mr. Roth has died.”

I felt the blood rush to my head, my stomach plunge. I sat down. I knew Sol had been ill, but he was always making light of things. I’d gone to visit him less than a month before. He joked that he and Champ were gearing up to crash a Harley roundup near the Grand Canyon. I felt as shocked and weak-kneed as when my own father had died. “When?”

“About a week ago,” Ms. Cullity said. “He knew he had cancer for a long time. He died peacefully in his sleep. In accordance with his desires, he didn’t want anyone but his family to know.”

“Thank you for letting me know,” I said, this empty feeling crawling inside. I flashed to the image of the two of us standing in his vault, staring at those paintings. God, I was gonna miss Sol.

“Actually, Mr. Kelly,” the lawyer said, “that’s not why I called. We’ve been retained to handle some of Mr. Roth’s wishes, in the matter of his estate. There are some issues that he didn’t want publicized. He said you would understand.”

“You mean the payments he’s been making into a Caymans account?” I could understand why Sol wouldn’t want that to come to light. Now that he was dead, I guessed the balance would be paid in full. “You can handle it any way you like, Ms. Cullity. I’ll always be eternally grateful to Sol.”

“Actually,” Cullity said after a pause, “I think we should meet, Mr. Kelly.”

“Meet?” I leaned back against the wall. “Why?”

“I don’t think you understand, Mr. Kelly. I’m not calling about any payments. It’s a matter of Mr. Roth’s estate. There’s an item he wanted you to have.”

Chapter 119

SPLIT ACES, wasn’t that what I called it a couple of years ago?

No, it’s a helluva lot more than split aces… It’s like hitting the lottery, mate, as Champ would say. It’s like the kick that wins the Super Bowl with no time left. You kick it over and over. The ball sails through. You can’t miss.

What do you do when the most valuable piece of art in the world falls into your hands?

Well, first you stare at it. Maybe a million times. A man in a white cap with his head tilted at a table and a melancholy look.

You stare at it until you know every stab of color, every line of the weary face. Trying to figure out how something so simple could be so magical. Or why it came to you.

Or if you ever wanted that kind of money.

Maybe a hundred million dollars, the lawyer estimated.

Then you tell your wife. You tell her everything. Everything you were sworn not to. Hell, Sollie’s secret was safe now anyway.

And after she yells at you for a while and wants to punch you, you bring her in and watch her see it for the first time. You see something beautiful in your wife’s face amid the astonishment and the awe. “Oh my God, Neddie…” Like watching a blind man discovering color for the first time. The magical caress of her eyes. The reverence. It takes your breath away, too.

And you bring in your ten-month-old baby and you hold him in front of it and say, One day, Davey, you’ll have a helluva story to tell.

You just won’t have a hundred million dollars, guy.

So it always comes back to that question. What do you do with it? After all, it’s stolen, right?

Throw some big Palm Beach bash. Get your face in “The Shiny Sheet.” On the Today show? Make the ARTnews Hall of Fame.

You stare at Gachet’s face. And you see it. In the angle of the cocked head. The wise, melancholy eyes.

Not the eyes of a doctor, sitting there in the hot June sun. But the eyes of the person painting him.

And you wonder: What did he know? Who does this really belong to?

Stratton? Sollie? Liz?

Certainly not me.

No, not me.

I mean, I’m just a lifeguard, right?

Chapter 120

NEXT YEAR…

“Ready…?” Ellie and I took Davey by the hand and led him down to the sea.

The beach was wonderfully quiet and empty that day. The surf was gentle, A couple of vacationers were strolling by, wetting their feet. An old woman wrapped all in white and wearing a wide straw hat, searching for shells. Ellie and I took Davey by the hand and let him jump off the dune to the surf.

“Ready,” my son replied, determined, his mop of blond hair the color of the sun.

“Here. This is how it’s done. ” I rolled up a piece of paper and threaded it into the mouth of the Coors Light beer bottle. Coors was always my brother’s favorite. Then I jammed the cap back on tightly and hammered it with my palm.

I smiled to Ellie. “That oughta hold.”

“I never met him, Ned, but I think Dave would like this.” Ellie looked on approvingly.

I winked. “Here.” I handed the makeshift bottle to Davey. We walked down to the rippling tide. “Wait for the current to draw back into the sea.” I pointed toward the foamy riptide. “You see it there?”

Davey nodded.

“Now,” I said, easing him toward the water, “throw!”

My twenty-month-old ran pitter-patter into the surf and hurled the bottle with all his might. It went only about three feet but caught the lip of the receding wave and was drawn, gently, by the undertow.

A new wave hit the bottle and it bobbed up high but rode on, as if it knew its purpose, and fell over the crest, farther away. We all cheered. A couple of seconds later, it was like a little craft that had righted itself, successfully riding the waves out to sea.

“Where’s it going, Daddy?” little Davey asked, shielding his eyes in the bright, ocean air.

“Maybe heaven,” Ellie said, watching it drift.

“What’s inside?”

I tried to answer, but my voice caught in my throat and my eyes grew a little tight.

“It’s a gift,” Ellie answered for me. She took my hand. “For your uncle Dave.”

It was a newspaper article, actually, that I had stuffed in the bottle. From the New York Times. In the past few days, it had also been reprinted in most other major newspapers in the world.

The art world was shocked Tuesday afternoon when a painting donated at a charity auction in Palm Beach, Florida, thought to be a reproduction of a missing van Gogh, astonishingly has been identified as an original.

A panel of art experts, consisting of historians and curators at major auction houses who studied the canvas for several days, authenticated the painting as van Gogh’s long-missing second portrait of Dr. Gachet, painted in the weeks before the renowned painter died. Dr. Ronald Suckling of Columbia University, who headed the panel, called its sudden appearance “irrefutable” and “a stunning and miraculous event for the art world and the world at large.” He added that no one has “the slightest idea” where the painting has been for 120 years.

More baffling is how the painting suddenly surfaced, and how it was anonymously gifted to the Liz Stratton Fund, a Palm Beach charity set up to protect abused children, a fledging project of the late Palm Beach financier’s wife, who was reputed to be murdered in a tragic series of crimes that struck this fashionable resort town a few years ago.

The painting was part of a silent auction of the inaugural charity event. It was, according to charity spokesperson Page Lee Hufty, “donated and delivered to us anonymously. Never for a second did we actually imagine that it was real.”

The value of the piece, thought to be upward of $100 million, makes it one of the largest donations to a specific charity in history.

“What makes the thing all the more incredible,” Hufty explained, “is the note that accompanied the gift. ‘To Liz. May it finally do some good.’ The note was signed, Ned Kelly,” a veiled reference perhaps to the legendary Australian bandit of the nineteenth century known for his good deeds.

“It’s like some crazy, generous, unexplainable joke,” Hufty said. “But whoever he is, he’s right, this gift will do an unimaginable amount of good.”

“Is that heaven?” little Dave asked, pointing toward the horizon. “I don’t know,” I said, watching the bottle glint a last time as it melded into the sea. “But I think it’s close enough…”