Elise Blackwell - The Lower Quarter

“Rich enough to buy whatever you want to own is how I remember her putting it.” Eli immediately regretted being drawn into the conversation on Fontenot’s terms and worried that his words might cost Felicia something. He vowed to stop drinking before what the rest of the world considered cocktail hour, which was about six hours later than it seemed to be in this city.

“That’s true; that’s true.” Fontenot stroked his face and seemed to be thinking about something far away.

“Belgium’s beside the point, though, really, because two Van Mieghems were found right here in New Orleans.”

“Ted said a missing Van Mieghem.”

Eli had no idea how much Ted had told this man or why. He ran his tongue over the front of his top teeth, feeling the smooth film left by the drink. “Three paintings were stolen together a good long while ago. Two of them were recently found in New Orleans.” He felt pretty sure he was telling this man something he already knew.

“And you think the third one might have walked off here.”

“It’s one possibility. Another is that the paintings became separated at some earlier point, shortly after they were stolen or else somewhere on the way here. But if that’s the case, it’s strange that word of it never got out. Stolen art generally shows up if it’s sloppily fenced. These aren’t the sort of paintings that would have been whisked straight onto a yacht headed for a Saudi palace or anything.”

“Perhaps whoever stole them wanted to hang on to them but needed some money and so had to part with one. But we’re just surmising now, aren’t we?”

“Well, if you do happen to hear something …” Eli gave him one of the cards the Lost Art Register had made for him. It named him a consultant and contained his cell number and email address.

Fontenot pocketed the card without looking at it, and Eli imagined the dry cleaner who would extract it from the pocket and throw it away, also without a glance.

Fontenot smiled, almost as though he were reading and responding to Eli’s thought. “Now, tell me what old Ted’s been up to out in California.”

Eli delivered as best he could, remembering the names of a couple of golf courses and a number that he thought was Ted’s current handicap, a hotel he’d mentioned on Catalina Island, some information about the Getty’s latest acquisitions and Ted’s fairly strong opinions about them, which were a mix of favorable and irate.

Toward the end of the second Negroni, Eli shifted course. “I do have one more question. There’s a restorer in town, Johanna …”

“Ah, yes, Ms. Kosar.”

“She’s done some work for you, I take it.”

Fontenot held out his hand in the stop gesture. “No offense to this fair city, which after all is my home, but there is no one local I’d trust with any part of my collection. I’m sure Ms. Kosar does fine work, and I know that Felicia’s outfit has directed items her way. And Felicia knows her business well, so I’m not implying otherwise. But my collection is, well, it’s very important to me, and there are only a few people in the world I would let near one of my paintings.”

“But you do know her — Johanna, Ms. Kosar.”

“Not really, but we have met. She’s one of my son’s friends. I don’t know where he finds them, which is not to say that she’s one of the worst. Seems like a lovely young woman, in fact. Far too good for the likes of my son, if you ask me, though the fact that she has anything to do with him does not speak well of her judgment.” He laughed now, as though he had been told a joke a minute ago that he’d just got, even slapping his thigh with the realization of whatever it was he found funny.

Eli stared at the amber dime of liquid in the bottom of his glass, his own realization not at all humorous: Johanna had probably lied to him about how she knew the Fontenots. Eli was certain that Fontenot was giving him a mix of truth and lies — or, maybe more likely, small truths that created and hid a greater lie — but when he said Johanna had not worked on one of his paintings, it had the ring of plain truth. Sometimes when people overexplain, they’re lying, but Fontenot had just been bragging.

The rich man leaned back, and for a moment Eli wondered whether the tall chair would hold his shifted weight. “Out of curiosity, may I ask how you arrived at the idea that I have ever hired Ms. Kosar? Is that something she told you?”

Eli locked up in a way that was probably obvious, though he recovered enough to down the last sip of his drink as a stalling tactic. He was pretty sure he was mostly mumbling when he said he thought Felicia had said something about that, but it was entirely possible he’d got it mixed up. “Must have been someone else.” He searched for a name. “Prejean, maybe.”

Fontenot laughed. “Entirely possible. You do know, don’t you, that Ted and Prejean had a major scuffle a few years back?”

Eli took the opportunity to change the subject and laughed. “Now, I did hear something about that. How did they leave it, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Fontenot repeated a version of the story that was more favorable to the Lost Art Registry and less favorable to Prejean’s museum than the version Eli had gleaned from Felicia. “Not that I’m saying old Ted’s above that kind of thing. Hell, I wouldn’t put it beyond him to steal a painting just so he could be the one to find and return it.”

Fontenot hadn’t let him beg off a second Negroni, but he pushed the third less strenuously, and Eli was able to stumble back out into the bright day. He walked a block away from St. Charles before he realized his mistake and turned around.

He was still walking — indeed he wasn’t even back in the French Quarter — when Ted called to tell him that he had it on good authority that an art restorer by the name of Johanna Kosar might be in possession of the missing painting. He said it in a way that didn’t acknowledge that Eli had mentioned meeting with Johanna in the progress reports he’d sent to Ted and that avoided referring to the conversation he’d just had with Gerard Fontenot.

“I have no evidence that that’s the case,” Eli tried. “Nor where the painting might be even if Ms. Kosar and the paintings did cross paths at some point.” Her last name felt strange in his mouth. He’d only ever called her Johanna, and it felt almost as though she were that single name, a name whose consonants even sounded like vowels, a name that echoed like wind in his mouth, nothing like the curt and definitive Kosar —a hard word that sounded like it could inflict pain.

“You were hired because of your very particular skill set.” Ted’s voice was loud through the phone now. “Use those skills.”

Eli went back to his hotel to sleep off the drinks Gerard Fontenot had insisted on paying for and that Eli had let him pay for, figuring that was between him and Ted, a kind of jockeying between rich men that Eli wasn’t interested in parsing. He woke from a dream set in Puerto Rico — or, more accurately, a minimalist set depicting Puerto Rico — realizing what Ted had directed him to do. Still too tired to contemplate a response, he delayed his consideration and succumbed again to sleep. This time he was in the real Puerto Rico, swimming in the waves off Rincon. What woke him from this dream was not a realization but a sound: Someone was knocking on his room door.

Through the chain, he saw blond hair, turning, and then Johanna’s face. Even though she had already seen him without clothes, from nearly every angle, he rushed to pull on pants and a T-shirt before letting her in. He invited her to sit on the bed while he closed himself in the bathroom to splash water on his face and brush his teeth thoroughly.