The Hypnotist

FIFTY-NINE

The bulk of the estates on Round Hill Road in Greenwich, Connecticut, were on four- to ten-acre lots and set far back from the road, so few neighbors noticed the unmarked Crown Victoria driving through the iron gates of the Canton property that morning.

The housekeeper who looked at the agents’ badges was frightened and scurried off to find her employer.

Seconds later, Oliver Canton blustered down the hall. The red-faced, overweight man was wearing a bad toupee and an old-fashioned silk smoking jacket. “What the hell is going on here?” he shouted as he came toward the agents, who introduced themselves and showed him their search warrant.

“You are not looking through anything in my house until I call my attorney.”

“By all means, call your attorney. But make sure you tell him we have this,” Richmond instructed, holding up the legal document. “He’ll tell you that if you don’t cooperate it’s within our right to look around on our own.”

Not succumbing to the threat without a fight, Canton pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, dialed a number and explained the situation. As he listened, sweat popped out on his upper lip, and after a few seconds he hung up. His face was drained of all color.

“What do you want to see?” he asked.

The agents followed Canton into his library, where he grudgingly offered them seats at a round mahogany table.

“I assume you want to stay in business?” Lucian asked without preamble.

“Is there a reason I wouldn’t be able to stay in business?” Canton asked with a false bravado as see-through as cellophane.

Shabaz must have already been in touch with him.

“That all depends on you and your willingness to cooperate,” Richmond said. “We know you were involved in selling two paintings to Darius Shabaz. He’s given us the bills of sale and all the documentation on their provenance that you gave him. Everything was in order.”

Canton looked slightly relieved, then confused, and Lucian imagined he was wondering why they were here if the paperwork was in order.

“Everything, until we got to the last owner of each painting. At that point the owners had bogus names. Who did you purchase those paintings from? What are their real names? Did they come to you to fence the paintings, or did you put out the word that you were looking for works from those artists?”

“Those were the names the sellers gave me. I had no idea they weren’t their real names. How can I be responsible for people lying to me? The paintings were authentic, and that’s all that mattered.”

“Bullshit,” Lucian spat out. “You knew exactly what you were doing. Who did you buy the Matisse and the Van Gogh from? Real names. Now.” He banged his fist down on the table. Lucian was tired and jetlagged, his head hurt and he was absolutely certain this man was lying through his teeth. Canton not only knew he’d bought stolen artwork, but had probably orchestrated the thefts.

“My lawyer said you have a search warrant but that doesn’t mean I have to answer your questions. I was just trying to help out.”

Lucian stood up. Richmond followed, and together they started pulling out file cabinet drawers and piling stacks of paperwork on the table.

“What are you doing?” Canton screamed.

“We’re taking your records and getting out of here since you’ve stopped cooperating.”

Canton’s hand shook as he reached for the glass of soda already on the table and spilled some of it bringing it up to his lips. He took a long gulp and then asked, “What do you want?”

“The men you worked with,” Lucian said. “Who stole the paintings for you? Were you looking for those specific paintings? Did you put the word out? What the hell happened, Canton?” He knew he was bullying the dealer, but he didn’t care anymore.

Canton was hyperventilating, and his skin had turned even redder. Richmond glanced over at Lucian and raised his eyebrows as if to question the man’s reaction-was it a performance or for real?

“I need…” Canton whispered and then stopped. “I need…” Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out an amber pill bottle, thumbed the cap off, shook out a pill and, with trembling fingers, managed to get it into his mouth.

“You all right, Mr. Canton?” Richmond asked.

“It’s my heart.”

Lucian had been able to read the label. The dealer wasn’t in cardiac distress; the pills were anti-anxiety medication. “Then we’ll just take what we need and leave you to rest,” Lucian said as he started dumping the files into garbage bags he and Richmond had brought with them.

Yesterday afternoon the agents had visited Andrew Moreno’s art gallery in Chelsea, and the paperwork they’d confiscated from his office was enough to keep them busy for days. With this load added to it, Lucian figured he’d be working nights and weekends for a while. He’d need to call Emeline from the car and tell her he might not make it to the Met’s reception tonight. They’d talked twice earlier today, and both times her voice had been tight and twisted with fear. The longer the threats continued, the more distraught she became. Lucian knew from cases he’d worked on how incessant worry and fear frayed your nerves. At a certain point you stopped being able to push the anxiety aside. No one survived attacks like the one Emeline was enduring without scars. She’d told him that she’d gone back to work that morning, and so far had gotten two calls, both in the same mechanical voice: Tell anyone what I look like and I’ll kill you before they find me. You and your father, too.

“And he repeated it,” Emeline had said, her voice tight with the effort of holding back tears. “Three times. Just like in the e-mails.”

Lucian reassured her that Broderick and his men were getting close to making an arrest but it was a lie. They hadn’t made any progress. This guy had to be smart to go this long without once slipping up. Did that mean he was smart enough to elude them and get to Emeline? Lucian prayed not. One accident was all they needed. If he just stayed on the phone a few seconds too long or walked by the gallery and lingered an extra second peering in the windows.

“This drawer’s empty,” Richmond said to Lucian as he dropped another five files into a black plastic garbage back and nodded to another file cabinet. “I’ll grab that, you get the rest of the stuff.”

The color in Canton’s face intensified as he watched Lucian move to the desk and pick up the laptop computer. With a tortured “NO” the dealer leaped forward with teeth bared and bit Lucian’s hand.

Richmond jumped Canton, wrestled him to the ground and had him cuffed in less than thirty seconds. Lucian, excruciating pain radiating up his arm, read him his rights then listed the offenses he was going to charge him with.

“I’ll drop the last three and you’ll have a chance at spending at least some of the rest of your life outside a prison, but I want the name of the man or the men you worked with to get the Van Gogh and the Matisse.”

Twenty minutes later, as Richmond drove away, with the dealer handcuffed and whimpering in the backseat, Lucian kept looking down at his hand as if it had betrayed him by being so close to the dealer’s mouth.