The Memorist

Chapter 4

New York City

Thursday, April 24^th-11:34 a.m.

The intercom buzzed to life and Special Agent Lucian Glass frowned at the interruption as he looked over to check the building’s closed-circuit monitor. People thought nothing of ringing random apartments to get into the building because they didn’t want to search for their own keys, were trying to leave takeout menus on every welcome mat or were hoping to get in so they could roam the halls and look for unlocked doors. Even in New York it was surprising how many people were burgled due to simple negligence. But this time Lucian recognized the heavyset man standing in the vestibule peering up into the camera.

The rented fourth-floor studio was sparsely decorated with a battered card table and four chairs but overwhelmed with surveillance equipment, and while Lucian walked his way through it all to reach the intercom, Douglas Comley, his supervisor and the bureau’s Director of the Art Crime Team, or ACT as they all referred to it, pressed the buzzer again.

Within seconds of activating the downstairs door, the droning stopped and Lucian went back to what he had been doing before: listening to Malachai Samuels’ cultivated voice broadcasting from the Phoenix Foundation, across the street, via a state-of-the-art ultradirectional microphone. Since last summer, the FBI, Interpol and the Italian carabinieri had been investigating the so-called reincarnationist in an effort to prove he’d masterminded an international robbery that resulted in the brutal deaths of three adults and the kidnapping of one child. The stolen objects, a set of precious stones, were purported to be the legendary memory tools dating back to the Indus Valley in 2000 B.C.E. There was no question Malachai Samuels was obsessed to the point of fanaticism with finding absolute proof of reincarnation, proof he might have hoped the stones would yield, but neither Lucian’s team nor Interpol had yet been able to conclusively tie him to the crime. Half of the stones had been recovered by the NYPD and returned to the Italian government but the other half were still missing. Lucian believed Malachai either had the walnut-sized rubies, sapphires and emeralds in his possession or knew where they were. All they needed was for him to slip up, just once.

“I think seeing the photograph triggered the music.” Malachai was speaking. “As for what happens next-that’s your choice. You can cross the threshold or turn away.”

“You mean go to Vienna and see this thing?” the woman asked in a frightened voice.

Lucian had only seen her in a blur for a few seconds-jean-clad legs and leather jacket that looked supple even from across the street, perfect posture and wavy auburn hair framing her face-before she opened the door to the maisonette and vanished inside, but in that short time he’d sensed both her strength and loneliness. If he were going to paint wind, he’d choose this woman to stand in for the invisible power.

For nine months, Lucian had been listening to Malachai’s conversations and phone calls and reading his e-mails. He’d heard dozens of children embark on strange journeys without leaving the Foundation’s nineteenth century Upper West Side building. Astonishingly, they arrived in distress and left soothed. But the woman in the office today wasn’t a child and the conversation was different from any Lucian had heard before.

“I’ve accepted the mystery of my memories,” Meer Logan’s tremulous voice whispered over the electronic equipment.

Lucian’s ability to quickly grasp someone’s emotional and psychological makeup had started before his FBI training but Quantico had helped hone his intuition. Listening to this woman, he wasn’t sure why but he was worried for her.

“You think that but look at how much of your life, your ambition and your passion you’ve surrendered. You’re being held hostage, your talent is being held hostage by the fears and sadness you carry around,” Malachai said with a new urgency.

Without conscious thought, Lucian grabbed his sketchbook and started his third or fourth drawing of that hour, this one of Meer as a child. The pencil moved rapidly and a little girl emerged with dark hair, eyes wide with terror, tearstained cheeks and-

The doorbell rang and Lucian put down the book to let in his boss as Meer’s voice came over the speaker. “How can you honestly believe that if I see the box it could make a difference?”

“Triggers work the same way, whether we’re talking about past life memories or false memories, you know that. Here, I want you to read something…”

Comley walked in, heard Malachai’s voice, nodded in the direction of the equipment and asked: “Did I interrupt something important?”

“Not to our case, I don’t think so.”

Looking around, Comley grinned. “Like what you’ve done with the place since the last time I was here.”

“I’ve got some soda and there’s coffee-can I get you something?”

“The hostess with the mostess. Sure, I’ll take a soda.” Comley sat down at the table and noticed the sketchbook. He was glancing at the drawing of the little girl when Lucian put the soda down in front of him. “Who’s this, Mr. Painter Man? One of his clients?”

All the agents in ACT had law enforcement backgrounds but Lucian also had art school training: he was used to the nickname.

“An ex-patient, from what I’ve been able to decipher.”

“Do you ever wonder if you should have stuck with this?” Comley continued examining the drawing.

“My mother asks me that every once in a while, too.”

“And you also cleverly avoid answering her?”

Lucian didn’t dwell on his past but neither did he hide it. His art background helped him in his job and in his uniform of black jeans, black T-shirt and black blazer, he still dressed enough like a member of New York’s art scene to pass at a gallery opening. But that didn’t mean he talked much about his life before the agency.

He’d been nineteen years old, an art student at Cooper Union majoring in painting the year his future changed its direction. The Met stayed open on Friday nights and Lucian and his girlfriend, also an art student, had plans to see the new Zurbarán exhibition. He was meeting Solange at her father’s framing store, uptown, near the museum at six o’clock after the store closed, and they were going to walk over together.

The express train hadn’t been running so Lucian took the local and that made him fifteen minutes late. When he got there, no one was in the front room, which was unusual, and no one answered when he called out. Without stopping to think whether or not it was smart, he opened the door to the workroom and walked in.

Solange’s body lay on the floor, inside a large, empty frame, her blood splattered on its silver arms. As he stared down at the horrible arrangement, a flash of movement reflected in the polished metal warned him that someone was there-someone was behind him, moving toward him-but he wasn’t fast enough. Lucian was only a skinny kid studying to be a painter. He didn’t know how to defend himself.

When the paramedics found him, Lucian had lost six pints of blood from four stab wounds and been left for dead by the thief. Except he was still alive. Or was, until in the ambulance, on the way to the hospital, he died.

It took the paramedics ninety-two seconds to bring Lucian Glass back to life and although he’d never discussed that minute and a half with anyone, he had experienced it. He didn’t allow that the near-death experience had changed his life or affected him in any way-if the world didn’t look the same to him after the attack, he blamed it on losing Solange in such a violent way. But within months he went from a boy who’d never been in a fight, to a man fixated on retribution and revenge, and the FBI was the sanctuary where he turned that desire into a career. Art changed from something he wanted to create, to something he wanted to protect and rescue. Yes, he filled sketchbooks with unfinished portraits of people he came across during his cases, but how different was that from the way other agents took notes?

“You didn’t come all the way here to talk to me about my latent talents, did you?” Lucian asked.

Comley turned the book over to get away from the child’s sad face in the drawing. “I don’t like being the bearer of bad news but we’re shutting the case down. We can’t-”

“Why do you and my father keep trying to convince me this is all part of some great cosmic plan, that it’s my damn destiny?” Meer’s strained voice came over the microphone and Comley broke off, unable to ignore the plaintive tone.

“Destiny just puts us on the path that leads to opportunities. What we do with those opportunities is up to each of us,” Malachai answered.

“Yes, I know that’s what you think, but I think I’m too busy at the museum right now to go to Vienna.”

Lucian heard a child’s stubbornness in the woman’s decision. With an angry twist he turned down the volume knob and shut out the conversation going on across the street.

“I can’t justify keeping your team on this any longer without a break. You know how small our department is.”

“Let me work the case alone.” It was a request but Lucian said it more like an order.

“You’re not working this case anymore, my friend, you’re haunted by it, and that’s not good for either of us. No. I’m sorry. I’m shutting you down.”

Lucian walked over to the window and stared at the Phoenix Foundation. He’d been with the FBI for ten years, starting in the Art Theft Program and then being assigned to ACT when it was formed in 2004 in the aftermath of the Iraqi looting after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Since then, he and his team had successfully recovered over a dozen precious works of art worth more than thirty-five million dollars, including a Michelangelo drawing and a set of rare coins from ancient Greece. He’d succeeded time after time and had known that sooner or later he would fail. But he didn’t want it to happen on this case.

While he continued watching, the Foundation’s front door opened and Meer exited. Pulling up her collar, she stood impossibly straight, facing into the wind coming off the park as if she were gathering strength from the gusting air, and then walked down the steps and away from him.

“What’s the date on my eviction notice?”

“Two weeks from today,” Comley answered.

“Two weeks,” Lucian repeated with determination, as if making both a bargain and a promise.